Of All Time
by Daughter of Atlas
Summary: A series of challenge stories featuring the Greatest Earthbender of All Time, because she's sorely negelected and deserves more love than she gets. Be warned: here be Tokka. Chapter Fifteen: Ring.
1. Introduction

I dreamed of writing a hundred-drabble series. Then I woke up, and realized that with my way of writing, I'd be able to make a real drabble only by writing a real story and then cutting lots of it out, which is just too painful to bear. Therefore, I decided to write a oneshot-series, based on one-word prompts. They will be drabblelike when the prompt allows, or when I'm not feeling particularly wordy, but otherwise they'll be oneshot-length.

Oh, did I mention they're all Tophcentric, with Tokka when I can work it in? Because Toph is neglected, in fanfiction and in the show. She's too awesome to go unwritten-about.

(This fic bears no intentional resemblance to any persons living or dead. If I'm doing my job right, it should bear a very great resemblance to persons made up and not owned by me. That's as much of a disclaimer as I'm putting up, so let it suffice.)

Thanks to all my lovely reviewers, of past and future. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 1: Introduction 

The dress, Toph thought, was probably beautiful. It draped over her small frame in rippling waves of silk, it was weightless on her shoulders like spun light, and if she was still and quiet she could hear past the sounds of her own breathing its quiet serene whisper as it shimmered and swirled about itself. She grasped its long skirts in both hands, gathering fistfuls of material in clumps and handfuls, only to have them trail out between her fingers again, like water. Like sand.

The dress was probably beautiful. It sounded beautiful, it felt beautiful; every sense available to her told her that it was lovely and exquisite and fit for the highest queen or noble countess of any nation. It had been precisely designed to exacting specification, calculated in every way to please her – that is, to please the high-ranking duchess she was supposed to be playing the part of.

But Toph had studied the shape of the thing against the good solid earth. Before she had allowed the many twittering maids to engulf her in its silky confines, she had commanded them to take it outside and lay it out on the real, thick dirt. After this had been met with various states of shock and outrage, she had compromised by having it laid out on the stone floor of the ballroom, and examined it minutely before she allowed it to touch her skin.

The dress was beautiful. It was so beautiful it was unearthly, especially to Toph, who had found that it made almost no impression on the ground; it was almost impossible for her to even sense that it was there. Even accounting for the fact that it was cloth, and therefore lightweight, it had seemed to be _literally_ woven from spun light. And what she had been able to sense of it, she hadn't liked; all flowing skirts and trains, it seemed, nothing real or solid, not a metal buckle or realistically proportioned section to be seen. And therefore, while Toph was certain that the twitchy twittering maids had arranged the dress to perfectly complement her physical appearance, the dress could not be further from suiting the actual Toph, the girl who had flourished in the heat and shimmer and roar of a fighting arena, the Greatest Earthbender Ever.

Toph had never been much concerned with physical appearances.

Also, she told herself as she went about her private scheming, alone in her new chambers, the dress symbolized greater issues, issues of honesty and integrity. To let the world see her as such a bizarre reversal of who she truly was, wouldn't that only be the worst kind of deception? To lead them into believing she was delicate and proper, these people who might someday depend on her and rest their lives in her hands (feet, really), wasn't that a crime of the lowliest sort? The war had only just been ended, the world was at the edge of a new era of peace and openness, and it certainly would not do to found that new glorious age on a beginning of lies. No, it was her duty to take the measures she had taken, her duty to creep into Sokka's room in the middle of the night and hold a flagstone above his head until he agreed to help, her duty to send all the stupid screechy maids away, because they would never understand the urgency of so noble a quest…

First, the belt. Her hands encountered and old moth-eaten bundle of cloth and twine, its surface a strange mixture of the rough caress of burlap interspersed with clinging clumps of smooth, thick fur. She deftly found knots in the gnarled strings of hemp keeping the thing together, and it sprang open with alarming alacrity, freeing a number of things that clanked and clattered to the floor. Making sure to keep the loop of justification running in her mind, Toph reached down and found what she was looking for.

Questing fingers found that its surface was marred by rust and dust, the grooves filled in and the smooth parts scratched; she set about cleaning it, rubbing with the hem of her dress where she could feel particles of grit clinging to the metal. Her only thought as she was drawn into the absorbing task was that the fine fabric of the dress made an excellent tool for polishing copper.

After a few moments during which a faint hubbub and noise began drifting up through the flagstone floor, even Toph's sensitive fingertips could find no more marring dirt on the belt's surface. Satisfied, she clasped it around her waist, unable to contain a contented sigh as its familiar weight settled down onto her hips. The dress was scrunched and twisted under the smooth leather strap of the belt, and Toph turned to where she knew the mirror was and frowned at what she guessed was its reflective surface, playacting without an audience. She pretended to examine the dress with its new addition, half-turning and sighing as if in deep displeasure. She knew that the dress was beautiful without the belt, but with it… she just couldn't be sure, could she? She had no way of knowing what the dress looked like with this unanticipated change, and she certainly couldn't risk appearing in public looking at all unseemly… a conundrum, indeed.

A wicked, wolfish grin spread across Toph's face as she contemplated the solution. The dress couldn't be trusted, but she knew what could…

Fine fabric, she discovered, ripped apart as easily as air.

* * *

A new hall had been built in Earth King's palace for the night's revelries, sculpted carefully by the nation's finest Earthbenders and lined with interlocking plates of marble that had been left brashly unaltered, their seams showing, creating dazzling geometric patterns that swirled across the floor. Several guests (prominent among them a retired Fire Nation general with a rather portly frame) had compared it to, among other things, forms of poetry, autumn leaves, and bird wings. And while the floor was indeed beautiful, it was utterly surpassed by the living, glowing tapestry formed by the guests who moved across it.

Colors abounded among the crowd, as all had agreed was proper, this night being a reception bordering on celebration. Rubies and sapphires, ice-glows and wind-chimes appeared in flashes, in flickers, in abundance. The exuberant hues were an indication of the minds of those who wore them, for although the actual mood in the room was one of austere dignity and half-feigned caution, all could feel the undercurrent of joy frothing, seething, ready to burst forth.

Outside the building, in other palaces and courtyards across the Earth Kingdom and other nations, fireworks were lit and burst against the darkness, ice sculptures woven effortlessly out of air, snowballs tossed and monuments erected and drunken parties begun. Even inside the stately hall, the dignitaries of all four nations that made up the crowd, while striving hard to retain their stateliness and dignity, could not help gaping from time to time. Servants in dark crimson livery slipped quietly in and out of the crowd, lighting candles with snaps of their fingers, while a dragon made of water slithered above their heads, near the ceiling, where it was joined by a dragon of stone. Banners hung from the ceiling and walls, combining the emblems of all four nations into a circle, glorious symbols of the new Avatar's reign (a word which the Avatar himself had violently protested, seeing as he did not intend to reign over anyone, but a word which was being used in abundance nonetheless).

That selfsame Avatar, casting a glance over the crowd, could not contain a broad grin before turning back to an argument with a grizzled old Waterbender. The topic of their dispute, which took up one entire corner of the vast hall, was a great twisting hulk of copper tubes and water-filled canisters which stood dormant, apparently useless. In fact, it looked as though it had been made from one of the Fire Nation's war engines, after that engine had been smashed and flattened by several irate Earthbenders, then melted down and poured into a heap; the guests were casting it nervous sideways looks, and the Waterbender with whom Aang was arguing seemed just as unenthusiastic about it.

"I'm telling you, it won't work," he snarled, banging his fist against the thing's metal flank. "It's just a bunch of junk, smashed together in some run-down smithy or other, mark my words! The principles you used here, these hydraulics – this is impossible! Look, kid, I don't know who you are, but when the Avatar catches wind of this stupid hunk of junk you dragged into this ceremony, he'll have your hide!"

Aang grinned, tugging on the brim of the wide hat which hid his blue arrow tattoo and gave him a welcome resemblance to the servants scuttling about. "Somehow, I doubt the Avatar will be too angry with me," he replied, reaching out a hand to cover the opening of a tube which jutted out and then ceased, as though made expressly so that he could rest his hand on it. "And as for this not working… well, let me tell you, I've seen quite a few impossible things happen. You're thinking about this the wrong way. Just using the water alone, it won't do anything. But water in conjunction with something else – say, a favorable wind…"

Aang flexed his hand over the opening of the tube, sending a gust of air into the depths of the metal structure. Water frothed and bubbled and leapt up in its tubes, and a great harmonic humming suddenly filled the room, saturating the air and cutting off all conversation as the guests turn to look at the metal thing, now alive with the movement of water in the pipes and the one great note which it struck, and held, like some giant offspring of a flute and bell. Another gust, this time with his fingers in a different position, and the music rose a pitch, eliciting gasps and exclamations from the guests.

Then, with a carefully measured suddenness, Aang jerked his hand from the opening, and there was a deafening silence. Into that silence, like a clap of thunder, came three resonating booms. As one, the guests turned to behold a man in Earth Kingdom livery standing at the foot of a set of wide marble stairs, a scroll between his hands.

"I am pleased to introduce Bumi, former King of the Earth Kingdom," cried the herald, and the guests burst into applause as the hunchbacked madman himself descended the stairs, his green robes trailing behind him, a crown of peacock feathers arching upwards from his head.

"I present Her Grace Katara, of the Southern Water Tribe, Companion of the Avatar," the herald continued, and the crowd burst into most undignified whispers of awe as Katara descended into their midst, clad in a radiant dress of silver that gleamed like ice. Aang, standing comfortably unidentified at the back of the room, thought fondly that the only thing more radiant than her attire was her smile.

"I present His Grace Sokka, of the Southern Water Tribe, Companion of the Avatar," the herald continued, and Sokka managed to make it down the stairs in his sister's wake without tripping once – thanks, Aang knew, to many hours of practice with pointed icicles following him doggedly at every step.

Sokka reached the bottom of the stairs, but instead of moving off into the crowd as his sister had, he stood beside the herald, waiting. Aang had no time to puzzle over this, however, for the herald was speaking again, his voice bursting out into the sudden inexplicable stillness in the room.

"I present Lady Toph Beifong, of the Earth Kingdom, Companion of the Avatar!"

Silence.

The crowd stood for a moment, waiting; then, when no distinguished figure descended the marble steps, they began seething, whispering among themselves in tentative confusion. The herald, apparently as shocked as the others, fumbled with his scroll for a moment, then cleared his throat and tried again. "I present Lady Toph Beifong, of the Earth Kingdom, Com—"

Before he could so much as finish the word, a boulder crashed through the window. The whispering turned to screams; Aang ripped off his hat and leaped into the air, propelled by a gust of wind, old battle instincts kicking in and beating a furious thunder in his skull, but before he could attack or the crowd could panic he heard a familiar voice, shouting down the frantic movement in tones of a stadium announcer.

"Laddieees and gentlemen, of all ages, from all nations, may I have your attention please!" Sokka, taking his cue, had leaped up onto the boulder -- which Aang suddenly noticed had a perfectly flat top -- and was shouting out over the crowd. "I bring you the Ruler of Rock, the Duchess of Dirt, the Greatest Earthbender this world has ever seen, the Greatest Earthbender of All Time, in fact… Ladies and gentlemen, The Blind Bandit!"

The marble steps exploded, shards of stone flying out over the crowd and sticking in the walls high above their heads. Then, riding on a wave of earth that carried her down where the stairs had once been, came Toph. Aang only had time to see that she was clad in her green sackcloth fighting outfit instead of her fine silk dress before he collapsed, doubled over with laughter, and Toph slid down onto the solid earth, both fists raised in a victory salute.

Then Katara was at Aang's side, pulling him up by the elbow, hissing in his ear as guards (who were under strict orders from Katara to arrest anyone causing trouble including, she had told them, the Avatar's companions) converged on Toph and Sokka, who allowed themselves to be arrested without complaint, grinning from ear to ear. "I think it's time to make your grand entrance now," Katara snapped; still laughing, Aang could only nod, desperately trying to catch his breath.

The crowd was no longer frightened, but curious, craning their heads around to catch a glimpse of the two celebrities-turned-miscreants, and a few pockets of startled laughter could be heard resonating in the rafters. Aang, disguise discarded, stamped his foot and drew a dais up out of the floor, stepping up to catch the crowd's attention and allow Toph and Sokka to be dragged away in peace.

As he began to repeat the words he had memorized long ago, the words about truth and love and peace and harmony, he thought with a grin that Toph had been the only one all evening to be introduced for who she really was.

* * *

The End. Wordy, yes. Fun? To write, definitely. To read, I should hope so. What do you think? 


	2. Love

Chapter 2: Love

Toph's first bewildered thought, sitting in the warm throb of heat from the campfire and listening to the high cold night and the real solid earth, was that Katara was lying.

But that didn't make any sense. She drew back into herself, focusing on the real and immediate again, returning from where she had been ranging in imagination all across the surface of the planet, hearing and harmonizing with the rocks and mountains and the hills, letting them calm her nerves. Aang called it meditating; Toph called it listening, this suspended-in-reality state when things that were huge and close suddenly became distant and small. It had become ever easier to slip into communion with the earth, lately; exhaustion so fogged her mind, and listening to the earth was so much like falling asleep, that she would spend hours feeling the hoofbeats of wild animals thud into her skull, listening to the clack of river rocks as they were tossed against each other by the current of the stream.

But something had drawn her out of her listening state tonight, something close, something louder than it should be in the past-midnight silence of the camp. An irregularity, a change in the gentle rhythms of the three steady heartbeats that moved around, sat by the fire, brushed Appa's coat. Toph liked it when Aang brushed Appa's coat, because Appa's heart was so big that its beating almost shook the earth itself, and she like listening to its low, deep soothing throb playing harmony to Aang's vibrations, which were almost birdlike beside the bison's.

Aang was not brushing Appa's coat now, though. He was sitting across the campfire from her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, she could feel him. Tapping his staff gently against the ground, one-two, one-two-three. He was talking easily, musically, his high fluting voice carrying in the earth as well as in the air. Toph could have listened to what he said, but it was more pleasing to let his voice and Katara's voice wash over her in an undifferentiated rush, talking of nothing and of everything, the sort of conversation that ambles into life between close friends at ungodly hours of the morning.

Aang's vibrations were light and unburdened as his voice. His heartbeat was quick, but no quicker than normal, and slowing down with the heaviness of sleep. He was not unduly troubled; in fact, he was perfectly at ease, laughing with Katara as though he had been made expressly for the purpose of sitting there, next to the campfire, talking with her.

It was Katara that was distinctly unusual. As Toph returned to immediacy, she realized that Katara's heart was racing, her entire body was strung with wire-tight tension, she was a feather's width away from trembling. Individual granules of earth were trembling, the quickness of her breathing shaking the ground beneath her. Toph had only ever seen that level of stress in Katara a few times before; in battle, before she was able to calm herself into the determined purpose of Waterbending, and in deception, when she told some blatant lie or fluttered her eyelashes to get into some palace, praying desperately not to get caught.

Toph blinked, surprised, but the vibrations were unmistakable. There were no enemies about as far as she could sense, they were days past their last danger and days before any foreseeable fights, so she could only conclude that Katara was lying.

That didn't make sense, though, because Katara wasn't _saying_ anything. She was speaking, certainly, but it was the kind of senseless noise that was used to fill the vast spaces of the night when sleep was impossible. She wasn't saying anything worth lying about, and she was talking to Aang, whom she would never lie to, and even if she were to lie to Aang, there should not be this overwhelming anxiety; Aang would not behead her if she were caught.

Yet the tension was there, and the conversation went on, and as Toph sat and then eventually stretched out on the ground with one ear to the earth to better hear the tremblings, she began noticing distinct patterns. Katara's heartbeat settled down after a few moments of uneventful conversation, then leapt into a wild tattoo drumbeat whenever Aang laughed; she calmed down when Sokka called a question from across the campsite, yet when total silence fell, the heartbeat sped up again into near-hysteria. And though Toph was tired, and young, she was not stupid. She was able to guess that, during these periods of comfortable yawning silence, Katara was looking at Aang.

But a lifetime of experience had hammered into Toph's brain the meanings of those frantic vibrations, the movements in the earth had emblazoned themselves upon her mind as hallmarks of danger or falsehood. She could not shake the sense of dishonesty; it was linked so strongly to a sped-up heartbeat that it the two could not be separated. Therefore, Toph's first experience with love, even the love of someone else, irrevocably impressed upon her that love was a form of lying.

Of course, she didn't know just then that Katara's abnormal heartbeat constituted love. She was too tired, and too young, to make such a connection with one ear pressed to the earth, her hands flat against the ground, so close to drifting off into sleep and so comforted by the embrace of rock on all sides. Yet during the long windy days of flight, when she was blind and bored and isolated, it bothered her, this question of biology and anxiety without reason. She tried asking Sokka once, though she dared not come out and say bluntly what she wanted to know, because as she approached the subject she could feel _him _growing more and more tense, then mumbling under his breath and smacking his boomerang into the palm of one hand. Eventually, she gave up, and simply worried it in silence, in her own thoughts.

Then, finally, the answer occurred to her, and the worrisome questions vanished. Of course, she knew that love wasn't lying (at least, not for the most part), she knew it was a good thing, a desirable thing, and she stopped thinking about hidden secrets or potential betrayals.

She knew that love wasn't lying, but Katara's elevated heartbeat had sounded like lying, and now that she had found out that the elevated heartbeat was called love, the connection between the two was, at least in her mind, set in stone. From then on, when she felt Katara's and then Aang's heart leap, when she was blearily woken from sleep and heard the two of them whispering around a dying fire, when she felt people walking down the street (once it was safe to enter towns again) hand-in-hand, there was a slight pressure of unease at the back of her mind.

For Toph Beifong prided herself on never lying, not even concealing the truth. She was afraid of lies, afraid of the power they could wield, afraid of the way they had of locking and tying and bolting shut. She was afraid of the tension they caused that felt so much like danger, she was afraid of the many times they had forced her into shoes and shut her into wooden rooms as a child. She was afraid of them, and she loathed them, because they were a tool designed for the sole purpose of keeping others blind.

She prided herself on being always truthful, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how wounding the truth was, because the truth did hurt, but the hurt was quick and immediate and then it was over and it never came back. It was lies that had the power to keep recurring, keep returning, biting when they were least expected and least able to be healed. In fact, Toph had only concealed the truth once, and that had been in a case, quite literally, of life and death. Then, a boy had died, but he had died deep underneath the earth and out of the sight of those who would be wounded by his death. That had been for the best, and Toph had withheld the truth from her friends – that his heartbeat was fading and his breath spiraling away – because it was better that they didn't know, better that they keep in the desperate wishing parts of their imaginations the hope that Jet had been healed, and gotten up and walked away, and was still somewhere in the world.

Toph had sworn to herself never to lie, until the time came when it was a matter of life and death, and a lie was the way to life.

One night, just before she drifted off to sleep, she thought about the fact that she saw loving as lying, and wondered if the same vow applied to love as well.


	3. Light

Chapter 3: Light

Lord Lao Beifong had married his wife because she was beautiful. He had not needed her family's comfortable wealth, not with his father's estate sprawling out over the hills of Gaoling, and he had not needed her social connections, not when he moved among the highest circles and could have gained audience with the Earth King himself, if he had so chosen. Instead, Lao Beifong had fallen in love with the young maiden's lovely lark voice, with her graceful dancer's movements, with the porcelain skin and the long black silk hair about which poems had been written by half the young men in the village.

When he had come calling to court her and speak with her parents, she had been quiet and demure, as befitted a lady of her stature. When they had married, and he had moved into his father's luxurious house, she had been quiet and busy, the perfect porcelain doll wife, keeping out of his way as he went about managing the estate so that he was free to recline in his chair, watching her, basking in her beauty.

Staring blankly at the wood-paneled wall in his study, the seeds of a headache beginning to throb at the front of his skull, Lao Beifong wondered where that silent bliss had gone.

"Do you understand what I'm saying, Lao? This is terrible! This is a tragedy! This will ruin her life, and our lives as well! We must do something – anything – there must be something we can do!" Lady Beifong's voice was rising in pitch and speed, waxing towards panicked despair. Lao knew that if he looked at her, he would see her lovely ice skin flushed with passion, her hair escaping from its tight bun and framing her face in a way that was nothing short of exquisite, but he kept his gaze firmly fixed on the wall. Even that bright beauty not worth braving the screeching hysteria of his wife caught in the throes of desperation. Looking at her would only express agreement, which would encourage her, and then the screaming would increase sharply in pitch and volume, and Lao could not have handled that.

"There's nothing we can do," he said wearily, repeating the words he had mouthed endlessly over the past few days. "We've been to all the healers inside the city and outside the city. We've sent for healers from the capitol itself. We've had anyone who claimed to have any sort of power look at her, even the crazy rock-witches in the wilderness, and none of them have been able to do anything. Toph has been blind for three years now, and you have never been this distraught. It is a fact, and we must accept it. Toph is blind, and she will have to stay that way."

"But, Lao, do you realize what this means? It's just occurring to me, as she's starting to learn and explore, to excel in her lessons. It's shown me how… _limited_ she truly is. Lao, she can't understand things read to her about the sky, the stars – she will never see the _stars_! The sun means nothing to her, the flickers of fire on snow, the majestic profile of the mountains! Lao…" Lao wished to bang his head on the desk. He would not – it did not befit his standing – but he wished to. The young maiden he had married had written beautiful poetry; never had he anticipated that talent for imagery being used against him. He closed his eyes as his wife sucked in a large breath, preparing for a full-fledged wail.

"Lao, our daughter will never know what it means to see the sun… she will never know the meaning of the word _light_! Toph will live a life of miserable darkness! She will never see the glow of firelight, the blazing of shooting stars, the flowering of sunlight as the clouds clear after a storm… oh, such a miserable creature she will be, without the ability to appreciate the light and the golden beauty of the world! I cannot imagine what tortures she will go through… Lao, a life without light!"

A shriek of laughter from beneath the broad sill of his window offered a welcome diversion from his wife's hysteria. Lao turned his head, ever so stealthily, so his wife would not accuse him of inattention, and stared out over the gardens of his estate. In a flowerbed, his three-year-old daughter ran, and fell, and lay laughing in the dirt, her white dress stained beyond salvage, her shoes long gone. As he watched her laying there, with her mother's porcelain skin and black velvet hair but with eyes clouded by the silver cataracts of blindness, a thought occurred to him that he dared not voice to his wife. His daughter was laying on her back, her pretty doll-like features illuminated in the full golden glow of midday. Her blank eyes were open, staring upwards, unseeingly, but unflinchingly as well.

As the volume of his wife's screeching drilled into his skull with the fangs of a growing headache, Lao thought idly that Toph perhaps would not be confined to a life without light. After all, she was the only child in the world – in Gaoling, at least -- capable of staring directly into the sun.


	4. Dark

Yay, my first almost-blatant Tokka! I'm not so sure about this one as I've been about my others, but... hey, what can you do? Many drabbles to be written... meh. Enjoy, lovely readers, and review!

Oh, just a note: because it's not immediately apparent but very important, they're older. Don't know how much older, just... older. Whatever age you like, as long as it's older than the established canon age.

And yes, I'm being mean to poor Sokka, giving him random irrational fears. But when I saw this prompt, my immediate thought was of he and Toph, in a cave, and the cave being dark, and... just read, and tell me if I'm insane. Merci.

* * *

Sokka hated the dark for tactical reasons. It wasn't because, as a small boy with shaggy hair and a curved stick he threw at snow sculptures, he had taken to heart his father's stories of spirits and monsters; it wasn't because he remembered distant booms and bursts of fire against the black sky from just before the men of his village left. It was only because enemies were harder to see in the dark, it was because night brought with it ambush and danger and disadvantage in battle that he, as the Avatar's strategist, needed to compensate for. It was for this reason and this reason alone that he disliked wandering the caverns beneath the mountains with only Toph for company, where shadows snaked along the walls and he was forced to navigate by pools of sunlight that spilled down from uncertain cracks in the vaulted ceiling. It was for these reasons that, when there was a slight shift and groan of moving rock and a boulder toppled over to block those uncertain beams of light, Sokka was unable to contain a yelp of surprise at the pitch-darkness that fell like death. 

Immediately the ground wrenched itself from under his feet with an angry roar; flailing his arms in an effort to keep his feet, Sokka yelped again, only to find himself supported by a newly grown pillar of rock.

"What is it?" Toph's voice rang out, and the cracking of stone echoed like the roaring of some beast in the confines of the cave. "Sokka, what's going on? Are you all right?" The ground trembled for the second time, and the sharp retort of stone breaking snapped out again, this time accompanied with a rush of air as something flew past Sokka's head. Boulders, he realized, through the pounding of near-panic in his skull, Toph was ripping boulders out of the surrounding cavern and tossing them past him – at enemies? She thought they were being attacked, she thought they were in danger…

"It's all right, Toph, everything's fine!" he cried, still clutching on the pillar she had torn out of the ground beside him. He kept a grip on it so that she could better sense him through its length, could better see him through his contact with the solid stone. That was why he held onto the pillar's rounded top, not because he had been startled by the darkness and the noise and needed its support. It was so Toph knew where he was, nothing more…

"What the hell is going on, Sokka?" Toph growled. In the pitch-darkness, Sokka suddenly realized that her voice was more real than usual, more textured; he could hear, in startling clarity, the tension underneath her words, the rough edge of – was it fear? Worry, at least – the sudden rock-hard determination, the teeth-clenched readiness for battle…

"Talk to me, Sokka," she growled again, and he was suddenly jolted from his contemplations (the darkness made it hard to concentrate, there was nothing to focus on in the uniform velvet black). "Your heart's racing, your vibrations are wire-tight, and now you're being quiet. You're _never _quiet. Is someone behind us? I can't sense anything, but…"

"It's all right, Toph," he interrupted, blinking several times just to see if it made a change in the level of darkness. It didn't. "The lights just went out, that's all. It startled me. We're not being followed; at least, not as far as I know."

"Oh." There was a moment of silence, then a crash that made the ground beneath Sokka's feet tremble; he guessed she had lowered the boulder she'd torn out of the rock a moment before. "Wait… yeah, I can see where the rock shifted. It's blocked the only crevice leading to the outside…"

Silence fell again. Sokka simply stood in the darkness deeper than unconsciousness, waiting for Toph to say something, do something, anything at all. There was a curious sense of disassociation, deprived of his eyesight, and with the great trembling silence of the cavern all around; he felt curiously as though there was nothing to anchor him to the waking world, felt as though he had been dropped prematurely into sleep, or death. Every muscle in his body locked tight, every instinct screaming at him not to twitch, not to move; deprived of senses, he was besieged by the lurking fear that the world he knew had disappeared, that he was surrounded by a depthless chasm, that the darkness hid some sort of hideous drop and without the sight of it to confirm it he couldn't be sure the earth around him really existed. Unbidden and unreal, memories were crowding back at the edges of his consciousness, memories of vast cold ice expanses and the very ground beneath him giving way and then the cold dark shock of endless water…

He was shocked from his trance by a hard touch on his elbow, ridiculously solid and real after the vague mist of (not fear he wasn't afraid he was never afraid not fear not fear) that had crept into his mind. He bit back yet another – not squeak, not squeal, what was a manly word for the noise? – bellow of surprise, as what he had identified as a hand slid down from his elbow to his wrist, sandpaper against his skin, rough with calluses and dirt.

"Toph?" he panted, beginning to grow quite annoyed with unannounced surprises. "Toph, what are you doing?"

"Getting you out of here," came the simple reply, as Toph grabbed his hand (he could feel a few granules of earth rubbing off into his palm). "You said the lights went out, right? Well, that means you can't see, but I can. Just shut up and follow me, Snoozles, and we'll be out of here in no time."

The hand in his (so small, it was almost lost in his grip) tugged him forward, and Sokka had no choice but to follow, his free hand drifting to the bone handle of his boomerang where it was tucked into his belt. They walked in silence for a while, the clanks and clatters of their footsteps resounding off the cavern walls, echoing back and overlapping, reminding him of ripples in a pool, of the intersecting currents of a waterfall.

Then the novelty of his sensitivity to sound was gone, and the clamped-tight nervousness of being in the darkness was slowly fading, as they continued walking forward and nothing happened, nothing attacked. Time passed.

"It's dark," Sokka said finally, having long grown bored with the silence and the footsteps and the insistent pressure of Toph's hand in his, tugging him forward.

"Is it?" Toph replied, rather absentmindedly. "I hadn't noticed."

"Yes," Sokka confirmed, feeling fairly sure of himself about this, if nothing else. "Yes, it is dark. It's very, very dark."

"Well, good for you," Toph replied, and lapsed off into silence again. She seemed very focused on doing whatever it was she was doing – finding their way with earth-sight, he supposed – and he was growing annoyed at being so ignored; that, and the fact that he was unwilling to face another boring interval of silence.

Then, he noticed something that distracted him quite effectively from both his annoyance and his boredom. "Toph," he said slowly, thoughtfully, "You're holding my hand."

"Well, duh," she replied, still tugging him forward, apparently not as impressed by this fact as he was. "I couldn't just leave you here. Katara would have my hide if I left her defenseless brother in the big scary cave, alone and afraid." Her voice had risen into a mocking whine, and the last few words were spoken in a sneer that he could hear in her voice.

"What --! You – I am _not _afraid!"

"So you say. You should have heard your heart – for a minute there I was afraid you were going to _die_."

"That is _not_ true!"

"Sure it is. You just don't want to admit it, because if you did you'd have to admit that the bald little shrimp who goes by 'Twinkletoes' is manlier than you. At least he can handle a little darkness."

"You – you – you're lying! Aang is _much_ wimpier than me!"

"Whatever you say, boomerang-boy."

"Stop it!"

"Stop what? I didn't say anything!"

"Stop that – that – _smirking_!"

"You couldn't possibly –"

"You know what I mean! Stop being – so – you!"

"Sure, Snoozles," she answered wryly, "I'll get right on that, okay? But for now…"

And then there was light, a vast explosive flowering of light that burst into his brain, seared his eyes with a white sun-haze and forced him to raise a hand against it. Then the pain cleared, and though there were still gray sun-streaks that shimmered across his vision, he could make out a wide rough-hewn cave mouth up ahead and, beyond that, a wide circle of brilliant blue sky.

"Here we are," Toph announced, drawing his attention away from the breathtaking scene. He glanced down at her, only to find that her face was half-illuminated by the sunlight so dazzling after such darkness; and, he found, her profile was far from dazzling in and of itself.

That, he told himself, was simply because she was the first thing he had seen since that terrible blackness which seemed much more oppressive (glancing back over his shoulder) now that he had left it.

* * *

Toph allowed herself a half-smile, head cocked to one side, listening to the earth around her. Behind stretched the great open spaces of the network of caverns; ahead, the stone dropped off in a jagged cliff, and she could feel the warm caress of sunlight on her face. More importantly, though, she could hear Sokka's heartbeat slowing down, descending from the sustained pitch of panic that had followed her all through the dark (she supposed) cavern. In fact, she was concentrating so much on listening to Sokka's heartbeat and breathing return to normal that she didn't notice the slight shifting of his weight against the earth that came from his leaning over, ever so slightly, to place his hand on her shoulder; she jumped at the sudden contact, startled.

"Thanks for getting us out of there," he said in a tone that would have been nonchalant if he hadn't been almost whispering it into her ear, as though afraid someone would overhear. When he drew away a moment later, she found herself feeling unduly cold and leaden; she shook herself out of it, scowling, as Sokka continued, "Though I don't believe it was necessary to insult me."

Toph grinned again, staring up at where she guessed his face would be. "It kept you distracted, didn't it?" she asked gleefully, wickedly. "Not to mention it was fun. Can't a girl enjoy herself every once in a while?"

Sokka snorted to express his opinion of that idea, but didn't reply. After a moment's silence, he took a step forward, sending small stones skittering down the slope, a series of small shocks that burst into Toph's consciousness like a rainstorm. She smiled; but the smile disappeared a moment later as Sokka reached out, casually and without the slightest sign of emotion, and took her hand.

Then he was walking forward, and Toph had no choice but to follow, her voice lost in a swell of shock, and then she was too preoccupied in picking her way down the jagged slope to speak. The earth leveled out further down, and in the distance she could hear the muted roar of a river, and Sokka still had not let go of her hand; shock forged itself into rock-hard courage, which failed almost immediately, leaving her grasping at words.

"Sokka," she finally managed, forgetting even to choose from her plethora of nicknames for him, "Sokka, what are you doing?"

"There's a river up ahead," he replied calmly, as though completely unaware that he was doing anything unusual. "We'll have to go over a wooden bridge to get across it." That was all he said, but the rest of the sentence hung out in the air, unfocused and unspoken, but tangible nonetheless; _you won't be able to see,_ _but I will_.

As Toph allowed him to lead her over the invisible swell of the bridge, as she stepped gingerly over the wood, feeling the cracks and warped wood of the planks beneath her feet, she thought that at least, as long as they stayed together, neither one of them would ever have to walk through darkness alone.

* * *

So? Are my secret fears of inadequacy justified, or are you, my kind and lovely readers, going to grace me with your opinions? Au revoir for now! 


	5. Seeking Solace

Yippee, my first story to actually have a relevant timeframe! I'd say this takes place within the first thrity seconds after the season 2 finale. I only saw the finale once, and that was several weeks ago when it was first released, and I'm going on memory alone, so hopefully I haven't contradicted canon anywhere. Have fun reading!

* * *

"The Earth Kingdom has fallen."

The words rang in their bones, shook the very universe around them with their power, their secrecy, their truth. That simple statement was a portent of things huge and looming and immovable, Fate like a tidal wave, poised and trembling to crash down and tear their very universe apart. The words shook the night and the sky; but they did not shake it hard enough to return it to its rightful self. The statement had power, but not enough power (or not the right kind) to twist back the fabric of time, undo what had been done, grant the deepest and most fervent wishes of the four children and the disenchanted king flying away through a long, cold darkness of stars.

Sokka stood at the front of Appa's saddle, clutching the rim of leather so hard that his knuckles were white, which he might have noticed if he had been able to tear his gaze away from the small oddly-shaped shadow in the valley between Appa's back and his broad forehead. Within that shadow, he knew, his sister (he loved her so much, his heart ached for her agony) cradled the comatose Avatar, who might not even be the Avatar anymore. He had wrenched a partial explanation of the night's events from out of Katara's grief, trying the best he could to decipher her near-incoherent ramblings between sobs, and in the same breath trying desperately not to look at the burns and tears that marred Aang's form and Katara's hands that glowed blue and rested over the worst of the wounds.

The double shadow that was Aang and Katara shifted slightly, and Sokka turned away, out of a bizarre surge of desires that he could not separate; the wish to give Katara privacy in her pain, the terrible fear that he would see Aang dead, or his sister dead, or both. Death haunted him tonight, for reasons he could not explain. Instead of trying to puzzle it out, he directed his gaze over the broad hill of Appa's back, seeking out the Earth King where the man had stretched out on the saddle, the light green weave of his fine robe almost glowing in the faint starlight. Beside him, the great hump of fur that was the bear settled down, shifted, groaned. The Earth King lifted a hand and stroked the big brown beast, with such obvious love that Sokka almost smiled. They had saved the Earth King, at least. No matter how useless the man had been politically, he was an icon to his people; they could turn him into a symbol of hope and unity, they could explain the situation to him and use his help to raise an army…

But Sokka didn't want to think about the army and the eclipse and the invasion. He knew he would have to, come morning, but tonight was going to be great and silent and empty, and he didn't want to fill that emptiness with thoughts of war.

He let his gaze drift away from the Earth King and his bear, searching out the final shadow in the group. Back in one corner of the saddle, as far away as she could get from her friends and her king (as if she could be commanded by a king), the leather borders of the saddle pressing against her on both sides, Toph sat hugging her knees against her chest, resting her chin on them as she gazed with her blank eyes out across the night. She looked melancholy and thoughtful, a far cry from the reckless warrior that had torn apart the defenses of an entire kingdom in an effort to save the world.

There, standing and leaning backwards against the rim of Appa's saddle, Sokka came to a shocking realization, one that completely derailed his concept of reality and turned his world inside out, gave it a good shaking, and snapped it back to a shape completely unlike it had been before. The revelation smacked him in the head like a well-aimed boulder, and he found himself knocked breathless for a few moments as he stared at the distant form, his mind lost in shock.

Toph was _small_.

He blinked, trying to combat what his senses were telling him, trying to deny that impossibility, that abomination; but he opened his eyes again, and Toph was still pale and unmoving, still small. Sokka's mind refused to process this. Toph was a giant in his consciousness, an unstoppable constant, a force of nature. She was invincible, indestructible, immovable. Yet he could not deny what he saw; that here, under the great wide vaulted sky and out of contact with the solid earth, with betrayal and death flourishing in their wake, Toph looked small, and pale, and … uncertain?

That was impossible. Every fiber of Sokka's being, every patch of skin that had once been bruised by a well-thrown pebble, rebelled against it. Yet Toph looked unsure, upset (he could not deny it, the moonlight illuminated her features almost too harshly), and though he would never voice it aloud for fear of having his limbs torn off, she looked in need of comforting.

Sokka was forced to sit down as that thought occurred to him, studying Toph from a distance, grateful she couldn't see his gaze. He knew that Toph would sooner throw herself from Appa's back than seek solace of any kind, he knew that she was about as sad and fearful as a saber-toothed mooselion. Yet she looked now as he had never seen her look before.

He wasn't stupid or suicidal enough to suppose that underneath her rock-hard exterior was a little girl in need of help and support. He knew from personal experience that her rock-hard exterior continued all the way down, through to her very core; yet it occurred to him now, watching her in the cold darkness, that perhaps the rock which was outwardly granite further down turned to shale, then marble, then iron and then, in her very deepest core, became gold.

Sokka rose from his position at the front of Appa's saddle, making his way back along the broad bison's length. The reins lay limp across Appa's head (Katara was far too distracted to deal with them), but there wasn't really a destination to steer towards anyway. Appa would know where it was safe to land, and for now, that was all that mattered; therefore Sokka judged it safe to leave the bison to his own devices. Instead, Sokka walked past the now-sleeping forms of the Earth King and his bear, stepping carefully over the beast's splayed-out paws and sitting down beside Toph's small form, leaning back against the back rim of Appa's saddle, saying nothing, fully aware that he had taken his life into his hands. Yet as he cast a sideways glance at Toph's profile in the starlight, he sensed that he would experience a brief reprieve from being attacked by rocks; Toph seemed as disgusted with the concept of war as he was, tonight.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Sokka rested his head on his hands, leaning back, looking up at the wide tableau of stars that somehow seemed much colder and much further away than usual. Toph shifted slightly, breathing a sigh that was almost below the threshold of hearing. Neither one spoke.

Finally, Toph shifted again, and this time her sigh formed words, though they were at the level of a whisper and quickly snatched away by the wind of their flight. "How bad is it, Sokka?" she asked quietly, almost too quietly to hear.

"Bad enough," he answered, just as quietly. There was a strange tone in Toph's voice, he mused, one he hadn't heard from her before. It was low, deflated… defeated.

Everything in him raged against Toph being defeated. "You know it wasn't your fault," he said, far too casually. He didn't think that was the root of Toph's melancholy, but it never hurt to ask, and Toph would never tell him on her own. But she shook her head.

"No, I know," she answered, and another period of silence threatened, spreading out before them like the dark hills and valleys of the countryside speeding down below. Sokka sighed, prepared to wait out the crumbling of Toph's defenses, already mustering a series of nonthreatening, non-pitying questions to pose. He had given himself a task, now, and he latched onto it with a sort of desperate focus to keep himself from thinking about the problems that awaited him, awaited all of them, when they touched down to earth; he would make Toph feel better, he would give her the solace she would never seek for herself. This was the quest he had given himself, as protector and big brother, and he was determined to pursue it; he could not heal Aang's wounds, he could not reverse Zuko's betrayal, but he could do this.

His planned interrogation was forestalled, though, as Toph spoke again. "I can't see Aang's wounds," she said softly. "I can hear Katara crying, but not much else. Will he be all right?"

"I think so," Sokka answered, with a sigh that he hoped she would not hear. "I think that physically, he'll be fine. Katara's healing him right now, and she'll be able to do even more once we've landed. I think he'll heal; at least, his body will."

Toph nodded, understanding both what he'd said and what he hadn't. Then she laughed, and it was a harsh, mirthless sound that grated over his consciousness like metal dragging against rock. "It's strange, isn't it," she said with a tone in her voice that he thought sounded almost ruthless – ruthless towards herself, towards the world. "It's strange how… _isolated_ we are. How _alone_. You feel it too, I know you do. Nothing's changed, we've even gained a traveler, we've got the Earth Moron and his big fluffball, but suddenly it feels as though the world is all against us. Of course, the world was always against us, but it really hits you after your archenemy has taken over the last stronghold of anyone capable of doing anything about it."

She was being ruthless, he decided. She was daring to speak the truth that they were all avoiding; she was punishing herself with that truth, cutting herself on its sharp edges so that repetition would dull the pain and make her stronger. This was how she always handled unpleasant truths, he realized, with a small shock. This was how she had dealt with her blindness; this was how she had dealt with every conflict she had ever faced. By battering herself with the hurtful things life tormented her with, by accepting and amplifying that torment, she made herself immune to it. That was why she would never seek solace; solace healed her wounds and made her weak.

Sokka was silent for a moment, thinking about this startling revelation. She apparently took his silence as an answer, for she let out another bark of that horrible laughter and turned away, wrapping her arm through one of the loops in the rim of Appa's saddle, fixing her milky gaze out over the great depths of space.

"You don't have to say it," she added over her shoulder, as an afterthought. "You don't have to tell me that I'm never alone, that we're a family, all of that junk you've picked up from Katara. I know the speech by heart, and it won't change the fact that we have more enemies than ever before."

"No," Sokka confirmed, thoughtfully, as she turned away, back into the emptiness of night. "No, you're right, it won't." A moment more of silence, a moment of stillness as Sokka allowed the small wisps of an important thought to coalesce and solidify in his mind, to form words that he could offer to Toph, that would drift down through her rocky skin down to the gold at her core.

"Maybe," he said slowly, placing a hand on Toph's shoulder so that she jumped at the unexpected contact and turned around again, fixing her blank gaze a little past his face. "Maybe it doesn't have to change that. Toph, can I say it anyway, that junk about not being alone? Can I say it because it's true, because it doesn't make the world less hostile but it makes the world seem less hostile?" He allowed a sad smile to trail across his face, only because he knew she couldn't see it. "Can I say it because I need to say it, and you need to hear it?"

Her slight shadow of a smile was all the answer he needed. She settled back against Appa's saddle again, her eyes fixed a little to the left of his shoulder, and he leaned his head back and looked at the stars, and he told her in the strongest terms he could think of (with his voice raised a little to carry up to Appa's head) about their family, and their friendship, and their love that would never let any of them be alone, ever again, no matter what. And as the bison curved away over the Earth Kingdom that slept unaware of its death, as the one half-dead child and the three living children and the defunct king soared away into the future which suddenly seemed dark and heavy like a curtain of lead, they found that those glowing words were all the solace they needed.

* * *

The End. The next prompt is a little tricky, but I have an excellent idea for the one after it... I think I'm going to reserve the right to delay certain prompts, because they're evil, so expect another update soon! Review, please! 


	6. Heaven

I absolutely adore this story. It's really probably my favorite so far. I didn't want to write a silly fluffy story where Toph finds 'heaven' by falling in love or something, because that's not at all Toph. I especially didn't think Toph would believe in something fluffy and bright up in the clouds, so far away from the good, real earth. Also, Piezo commented that it's fun when citizens act like their nation's element; so consider this story partly a gift to Piezo, a small glimpse of differences between Water and Earth people. Thank you, Piezo, for your lovely reviews and your kind help!

Without further ado, I give you Chapter 6. Enjoy!

* * *

The sun blazed down out of the brilliant blue sky, the cloudless curves of the midday heavens framing the flowering of spring in the Earth Kingdom. The air was cool and sweet, having had its edge of frost melted away by the mild weather, but not yet thick with the shimmer of summer's heat; the hills and valleys of the nation seemed to gleam and flow under that gentle golden glow. Distance melted into shadow, and the greenery of the budding forests dripped light as though made from jade-tinged glass. In the distance, mountains thrust their snowy crowns up into the sky, and on their slopes, barely visible, snaked dark shapes and the gleams of metal that marked civilization; in a large clearing in a forest a good three days' flight from those mountains, birds sang and harmonized, a great white sky bison grunted and stretched out in the warm noon, and the sunlight played among the collapsed ruins of what had once been an Earth Kingdom town.

Toph sat quietly on the ground a few yards from where Appa sunned himself, her legs bare and pressed into the prickling grass, her back resting against the curve of a slick mossy boulder that perched like a guardian at the edge of the treeline. Her blank milky eyes were closed, her head tilted back to better feel the soft glow of sunlight on her face; she pressed the back of her skull against the boulder's steadying hard stone, knowing but not caring that Katara would scold her for getting moss in her hair. She placed both palms flat on the ground, feeling without having to move the hill rising behind her boulder, the burned-out skeletons of the buildings which had once crowned that hill, the lumps of ash and charred bone that had once been the inhabitants of those buildings. Where she sat, midway between the corpse of the village and the living forest, the sweet green scent of flowers and trees warred with the acrid stink of burning flesh.

They had arrived too late; only hours too late, to judge by the accounts of the survivors they had found huddling under collapsed roofs and clinging to the limbs of smoking trees. The Fire Nation patrol had come, destroyed everything within sight, and gone. The farmhouses had been destroyed, the markets went up in smoke, the animals and the crops burned like twigs. The furrows she could feel in the earth, great zigzagging patterns of grooves, had had the corn and wheat scorched right out of them; Toph could still feel the scars in the earth where the flame had devoured the roots.

Toph sighed, slumping back against her boulder. Her muscles ached, her arms twinged from spending hours and hours opening and closing deep pits in the earth, from carving stone to mark the endless rows of graves of the unknown dead.

The wind shifted, the slight cool kiss of the breeze on her face vanishing and the stench of death from the village drifting over from the other side of the boulder. With it came voices; Aang's high-pitched but grave reassurances as he moved among those left alive, Sokka's shouted directions as he helped those left to rebuild, and… footsteps? Yes, definitely footsteps, Toph could feel them resonating under her fingertips. One set she recognized immediately as belonging to Katara; they were light and graceful, walking like dancing, yet rather slower than usual. The other set of footsteps was light as well, but not because they were graceful; they were clumsy, in fact, stumbling over themselves, dragging in the dust and jogging at times to keep up with Katara's longer stride…

Then the footsteps stopped, and Toph felt Katara sit down on a small hillock of earth just beyond the boulder, and pat the ground to indicate that her companion should do likewise. He did, and Toph suddenly realized why the footsteps had such a short stride; the silhouette she felt against the ground was small, much smaller than Katara, much smaller even than Toph herself. She felt her mouth pressing into a thin line, fighting back an odd pressure in her throat, which probably came from exhaustion and too much dealing with the dead, not from the realization that Katara's companion was a child.

Then Katara started speaking, and though Toph tried as best she could not to listen, she could not prevent Katara's fluid voice from drifting over the boulder and blazing into her brain. Katara was speaking of life and death and stars and moon; she was speaking of spirits and clouds and mothers and fathers. The pressure in Toph's throat grew more pronounced, and a prickling sensation made itself felt behind her eyes. She bit her lip, hard, opening her eyes and fixing her blank gaze out into the dappled darkness of the forest. Katara told the little boy that sometimes there were bad people in the world and sometimes those we love have to leave us, but they go to a happy place full of warmth and air and light…

Toph clenched her fingers in the earth around her, focusing on the sensation of dirt worming itself under her fingernails, into the grooves of her palm. She felt through the earth where Katara was leaning on her hand, felt where the other girl's skin touched the earth, and sent through the particles of dirt a series of their coded vibrations: _Behind you. I'm here._

She felt the waves travel up through Katara's hand and wrist; listening acutely, she felt as the other girl tapped her fingers against the dirt in a seemingly innocuous pattern, transmitting back in the same code, knowing Toph would hear: _Listen. Doesn't matter._ And Katara went on talking, as the little boy sat apt and attentive but still slumped over in despair, listening to prattle he didn't understand about the wispy misty place Katara called heaven.

Finally Toph could stand it no longer. Swallowing back the pressure that was not tears, she pushed herself to her feet, not bothering to brush the dust from her clothes but taking a moment to place a hand on the boulder that had hidden her, allowing its eternal calm to steady her nerves. Then, with the heavy soothing constancy of rock settling inside her, she stepped around the boulder, into the bright sunlight where Katara and the little boy could see her. She heard a small, quick gasp, and fought down a smile. She must have made quite a sight, dirty and dusty with rock and grass, moss in her hair from leaning against the boulder, clothes sullied and torn from a long day of labor. But she stepped forward anyway, kneeling down in front of the small boy as Katara gawked, shocked into silence.

"Don't listen to Sugar Queen, here," Toph told the little boy, jerking one thumb over her shoulder in Katara's general direction. "The place in the clouds she's telling you about, that heaven, it's nothing but a lot of stupid noise."

Toph allowed herself a smirk as she imagined she could feel the vibrations of Katara's jaw hitting the ground. The other girl spluttered for a moment, outraged, as the little boy gasped again; finally, after Toph's smirk had grown into a full-fledged grin, Katara managed to gasp, "You're not – it isn't – it isn't _stupid_!"

"Of course it's stupid," Toph answered, not bothering to turn around and address her remarks to Katara's outraged voice. "It's incredibly stupid. You die and then get shoved off into a happy place in the clouds where you dance and sing and flap your wings all day and everything is happy and perfect? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I would hate for that to happen to me." Katara had begun spluttering again, apparently lost for words, but Toph ignored her. Instead she addressed herself to the little boy, fixing her blind gaze where she guessed his face would be. "Did the Fire Nation kill your father?" she asked calmly, carefully keeping all pity and sympathy from her voice. The boy didn't answer, but she felt the vibrations shivering down his body and into the earth as he nodded. With this confirmation, Toph sat cross-legged on the ground in front of him, rapping one fist against the ground to draw the boy's attention and keep Katara silent.

"Listen to me," she commanded, and she felt the boy straighten up as he hastened to obey. "Katara means well, but she's from the Water Tribe. She doesn't understand how things happen here in the Earth Kingdom. She doesn't know that a strong solid boy like you won't be fooled by a happy paradise of light and mist. I'll tell you the truth. Do you know where your father is now?" She paused a moment, feeling the boy shake his head.

"He's part of the earth," Toph told him, grabbing a handful of dirt and holding it out to the boy, letting him watch it stream between her fingers. "That's why, this morning, your mother and I put him in that deep hole, so he could go back and be part of the earth. He's in the soil now, in the very rocks and the mountains and the hills. He's under your feet, right now. And he's happy, because he can be with you all the time; he can support you, he can help you stand. He's happy because someday when you build your home, he'll be in the stone you build it with. He's happy because he'll be a part of the walls that will protect you someday when you're a little older. Do you live on one of these farms?" The little boy nodded, and Toph smiled. "Your father's happy, because now he'll be able to help your crops grow. I bet that this next year, you'll have better wheat and bigger trees and juicier fruits than ever before, and that will be because your father's down there in the earth, whispering to the roots of the trees, telling them, 'grow big and strong, so that my son will grow up big and strong, too'."

Katara had stopped making small angry noises, and Toph could feel the boy leaning forward, entranced. "And if you don't believe me," she continued, "I'll tell you how I know." She lifted her own hand and waved it in front of her eyes, drawing his attention to the silvered cataracts that obscured their smoky green. "I'm blind," she told him, matter-of-factly, still without pity or regret. "I'm blind, and I've been blind my whole life, but I'm an Earthbender. And when you're blind, you learn to listen much more to everything around you. I learned to listen to the earth I bend, and the rocks, and the land. And you know what? Sometimes, if I listen very, very hard, I can hear all of the souls that are in the earth, and I can hear them whispering to the roots of trees and strengthening the walls of houses. I know they're there, and I know they're happy."

There was a moment of silence. Toph could feel Katara behind her, unmoving, and the little boy before her, shifting back and forth, processing this. Then, finally, after a few long moments, she heard his small squeaking voice, hesitant, cautious. "Can you hear him?" the boy asked, sounding shy as all little boys his age, but with an undertone of rock-hard courage in his voice that marked him as the Earth Kingdom man he would grow up to be. "Can you hear my father?"

Toph cocked her head to one side, assuming an expression of fierce concentration, as though listening to some barely discernible faraway sound. "You know what?" she asked, after a suitable amount of time had passed. "I think I can. And do you know what he's saying?"

The little boy shook his head again. Toph allowed herself a smile before she continued, making sure to put the unbreakable certainty of stone and the immovable truth of mountains in her voice. "He says he's very proud of you for being so brave. He says he loves you and wants you to grow up to be a good man, a kind man. He says never to be like those soldiers that killed him. He says never to let anyone chain you up or make you someone you're not. He says that he's happy, and he wants you to be happy, too." She tried to fix her gaze on his face again, making sure that every line of her body conveyed utter certainty. "He says that he'll be with you, and that will be the greatest heaven that there is."

She waited a moment, making sure the boy understood what she had told him; then, when she felt him slowly nod, she stood again, dusting her hands together, feeling an ember of embarrassment suddenly kindle in the pit of her stomach as she realized what she had done, and that Katara had witnessed it. Before she could retreat behind her boulder again, though, she felt something smack into her at about her navel, and a sudden tight pressure around her waist; before she realized that the little boy had hugged her, he had pulled away, and then his footsteps rained against the ground and he was gone, scampering back up the hill, his laughter pealing bright and golden down behind him.

Silence fell, as Toph stood unmoving, still shocked from the little boy's parting gesture. Behind her she felt Katara climbing to her feet, dusting off her long blue dress, moving around in small ways, scuffing the earth with her feet. Finally, Katara took a step forward and placed a hand on Toph's shoulder, squeezed it gently, saying all that needed to be said. When Toph offered no response, the Waterbender turned and walked back up the hill in the boy's wake, saying something over her shoulder about fetching Sokka and Aang.

Toph shook her head to clear it, then knelt down again, placing one hand on the ground as a sudden whim overtook her, a moment of weakness and fancy she couldn't control. She sent her senses of earth-sight and earth-sound down and out through her fingertips; then, after a few moments, she bent over and pressed one ear to the earth, holding her breath, listening for voice that would sing in the rock or pass coded messages back to the realm of the living.

"Silent as ever," she whispered to herself, with a small sad smile she allowed herself because she knew no one else would see it. She rose to her feet again, brushing off her tunic absentmindedly as she walked back towards Appa. She paused a moment as she passed the boulder, trailing her fingers appreciatively over its surface, drawing on its solid reality; she would need that calm to steady her during their further days of flight and fighting. She stood waiting, listening to the boulder's gentle hum on one side and Appa's great throbbing heart on the other, while behind her the sounds of the little boy recounting her story to his orphaned friends blew down from the hilltop, and she cherished it.

It would be time to be moving on soon.

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The End. Review, please! 


	7. Innocence

I realize that this had been done many many times before, and much much better than I am doing it here (most notably in the story _Gods and Magnolias_ by effie's head; go read that one), but this is simply what popped into my head when I read the prompt. It's not my best, but it will have to do for now. I have a really great idea for the next prompt, so if I may beg you to have patience with me, I'll give you a good show. In the meantime, read and review, s'il vous plait!

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The Earth Rumble tournaments were not (exactly) illegal. They did not actually cause any harm or destruction of property that would be contrary to the laws of the kingdom, and what damage they did cause was usually to the sort of people who would be the last to complain to legitimate government authorities. Of course, measures were still put into place (the 'place' usually being somewhere with the ambiance of a dark alley and about as much lighting) that would keep any soldiers from investigating in an official capacity. These preventative measures, which usually involved gold, were also aided by the fact that a great many soldiers came to watch the tournaments in an unofficial capacity and would be quite upset, not to mention out a good deal in uncollected bets, if the tournaments were to be dissolved. So they continued to exist, unspoken-of and left alone, not illegal but generally agreed upon as not being the best family-friendly method of entertainment that the Earth Kingdom, and the town of Gaoling especially, had to offer. 

This is why it was so strange that no one noticed a small nine-year-old girl slipping into the arena one fateful night, weaving nimbly through the legs of the burly men that crowded together in the entrance tunnel, snorting like hogs being herded into a pen, shouting bets and curses and other coarse things unfit for the ears of such a small child. There was no sort of security at the door – having found the place was proof enough that one was qualified to be there – and the girl was far below the eyeline of most attendees, but it was still rather odd that she managed to slip into the arena completely unchallenged.

Perhaps she was aided by the fact that her dress, once an eye-catching angelic white, had been so smudged with dirt and soot that it was now a muddy sort of gray, and thus much less noticeable. Perhaps it was the fact that she had forsaken her shiny shoes, which would have tapped and clattered against the stone floor, for much quieter bare feet. If anyone had looked closely at her dress – which of course no one did – they would have noticed that it had once been much longer, probably trailing on the ground, but the lower portion had been torn off, leaving a jagged hemline halfway to the girl's knee. This ensured that none of the other spectators were ensnared by her robe; she moved deftly enough not to be tripped over, and she was quiet, so it was as though she was invisible as she slipped into the moss-green sweaty shimmer of the arena and sat, no more than an oddly colored shadow, in one of the vacant front rows.

With a rumble and a roar over which the announcer's voice was no more than an annoying buzz, the tournament began. The little girl remained utterly still throughout the cheerings and smashings, except to occasionally move a few inches to the left in order to avoid a boulder which smashed into the stands, leaving a dusty crater where she had been sitting moments before. If anyone had looked closely at her face – which of course no one bothered to do – they would have seen her eyes, concealed by the filmy cataracts of blindness, wide and unblinking, her mouth hanging slightly open in utter shock. They might have noted that her breathing was growing labored as the scents of sweat and dirt and blood filled the stadium. She looked as though she was ready to tremble in ecstasy. She looked as though she was having a religious experience, communing with God.

Then the rounds were over, and a score of bruised and bloody men lay groaning in various prone positions in the deep empty moat that surrounded the actual table of stone that was the playing field. The crowd began shifting and seething, preparing to depart, as the announcer stood holding up the champion's hand and a bag of gold, asking for challengers that would never come, challengers which had never come before.

The low rumble of noise from the crowd was instantly silenced by a shout that cut through the thick stadium air, a high, piping, fluting call that was almost birdlike, ridiculously out of place in the dim underground battlefield.

"I will!"

Utter silence fell. Men who had half-risen to their feet sunk back into their seats again, craning their necks to catch sight of the muscled monster they expected to see making his way down to the field. Instead, they saw what appeared to be a little girl in a mangled dress, her hair pinned back into a complex series of loops and whorls worn only by the richest nobles. Confused, they glanced around again, thinking perhaps this girl was a herald of some kind, or an assistant, or a messenger. But no monolith of a challenger appeared, and the men were left scratching their heads and making various grunting noises to express their bewilderment as the little girl stepped onto the stage and took up what appeared to be an Earthbending stance.

The champion, too, was struck dumb by such an unexpected development. He stood gaping for a moment, as his rocklike brain tried to decipher the signals being sent to it and failed, engaging a backup response. The great man doubled over laughing, banging his fist on the stone floor, sending loose rocks jumping and clattering all around the arena. The crowd followed his lead, and soon the roar and hoots of laughter filled the stadium, though what they were laughing at no one was exactly sure. The little girl had failed to relinquish her absurd existence or given any indication that it was a joke. She hadn't moved.

The champion's laughter went on and on, even after the crowd's had stopped; he toppled over onto his knees, still banging his fist against the floor, clutching his side, his eyes tearing up and the tears gleaming in the stadium lights as he raised his head to howl his laughter to the ceiling. The little girl had apparently grown tired of his inactivity, for she slid one foot out in front of her along the ground, shifting her weight ever so slightly.

A pillar of rock sprang out of the ground and caught the champion under the chin, knocking him unconscious. The girl swung her foot sharply to the left. The earth under the champion's prone form buckled, tossing him over the edge of the field like a discarded pebble.

There was silence.

The men in the crowd simply stared, dumbfounded. They could not make sense of such an obviously impossible event as that which they had just witnessed. The deed and the person who had done it were so different they were irreconcilable. Therefore, the crowd all simultaneously came to the same logical (in the circumstances) conclusion; it was a trick, they had been cheated, they had been duped! Three of them closest to the stage, having laid enormous beats on the champion's rock-solid shoulders, were overcome by rage and rushed the playing field, swinging fists and boulders as they went.

The little girl didn't turn her head to look at them. Instead, she smiled a great wide beaming butterfly-chasing smile and swung a veritable cliff at her three attackers that broke every bone in their bodies.

Then, as the crowd stood stunned and immobile, the girl turned away from her would-be assailants, tucked her hands into her sleeves and walked back towards the stadium entrance, plucking the bag of gold from the announcer's limp hand as she went. Without a word, without acknowledging the hardened warriors who stared after her as though she was the specter of Death itself, Toph Beifong walked out of the stadium, returned home, and spent the rest of the evening playing with the pretty porcelain dolls her mother had bought for her birthday.

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I repeat: Review, s'il vous plait! Reviews make me happy, make me write faster, and... did I mention they make me happy? 

That's enough pathetic begging for one story, don't you think? Au revoir!


	8. Drive

This is another one I'm feeling only meh about. I didn't really have a plan for it, thus it's extremely short and unfocused, probably because I decided I have to actually stick to my prompt list and so had to put off the prompt I really really want to do, which is two prompts from now... I'll get there soon enough. Until then, enjoy!

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The few months after her twelfth birthday, the months just before her first real friends had dropped into her life on the back of a flying sky bison, had been the worst. She had begun to grow, a fact which her parents refused to acknowledge; the frustration of a dawning warrior chained in a child's too-safe world had driven her to become reckless, become careless, become desperate. Beyond breaking the limits placed on her by her parents, she had begun breaking the limits placed on her by herself; she had begun climbing out of her window almost every night, opening holes under the walls and the feet of the guards, walking for miles underneath the earth until she had reached the last outpost of civilization and beyond. During these excursions she took no precautions; more than once, with her entire body shaking from the sudden explosive need to be _free_, she had forgotten even to lock her bedroom door.

She didn't care. The risk of being caught hadn't even occurred to her in the sudden churning fury that surged up from the depths of her soul, alone in her wooden prison cell at night. She slipped out to the edges of her world, she tore through the very fabric of the earth as though hoping to hear it scream, she fought her way up to the surface in some forest clearing and broke through the layer of topsoil as though breaking the surface of the ocean, having almost drowned.

She spent her nights in frenzies of destruction, stamping her feet to create stone statues of those around her (mother, father, servants, guards) and tearing them apart, ripping them to dust, sometimes with her senses of earth-sight, sometimes with her own hands clad in gloves of stone. She tore limbs from them and clawed open their chests, destroyed their hearts, which were invariably lumps of black coal. Because these people, these guardian ghosts that spoke to her from wooden corridors and never stepped out onto the real earth where she could look at her, they had no hearts. They had no hearts, no minds, no souls; they were nothing more than noxious creatures of slime, made of muck and mud and shifting sand, never solid for more than a moment, never decisive or stubborn or real. They oozed pity; that was all they were.

They were nothing more than pity, all of them; as Toph tore apart rocks with her teeth bared and her blank eyes slanted into a glare that was scorching enough to start fires even obscured by the filmy cataracts of blindness, she felt that stench of pity filling her nose, that hideous reek of mud and flowers. She felt them pressing all around her, on all sides, murmuring in soft gentle voices and pushing, shoving, leading her about with soft gentle hands and never-quite-scream and never-quite-touch. They were never solid or real around her, never raised their voices, never moved under their own power; they slouched and slimed, they slithered and whispered, they sweated pity out of their pores and slouched over, because pity had no substance and had no solidity and could not support their frames.

Pity, she thought (not thought, adrenaline left no room for thought, only gut-instincts), ate away at them, started as some little seed inside of them and spread, an insidious disease, rotting away at everyone around her, rotting away her life. It ate away at her core, it attacked her from all sides, it tried to bury her in its suffocating leaden embrace; it tried to reduce her to a ghost of a shadow, a pale silhouette of nothing capable of nothing, meaning nothing, made of nothing. There in the clearing under the grinning moon she fought against its slow invasive creeping, she fought by tearing at the earth and screaming just for the sake of making sound, smashing boulders together until her arms ached just to know that she existed, that she was real. She cherished the pain, because it was something to feel. At twelve years old, she was a masochist; the sting and burn in her arms was a reward, was a badge of morality, of reality, of triumph.

It was this, more than her youth and her size and her prowess with her element, that drove grown men weeping before her in the Earth Rumble arena. It was the fact that she had no substance in the world above ground, it was the fact that she lived to fight because fighting was the only time when she _could _live. The hot swelter of the lights focused her, solidified her, anchored her to reality in a way that was new and exhilarating and sweet with the allure of the forbidden. She felt golden, and vibrant, and _alive_; the sweat and the dust settling onto her served only to outline the boundaries of her skin, the opponents thrown to her like sacrificial victims served only to show examples of her power, the shimmer-sound roar of the crowd served only to blur the rest of the world so that she might be the only solid, unmoving thing in the universe and so harness the eternal power of the earth.

It was the sneaking poison of pity, the chains of childhood, which drove her to defeat all who challenged her in the tournament arena. It was not rebellion, but survival instinct that kept her moving, fighting, winning. The men who faced her had lives outside of the moss-green cavern; she had nothing. They were motivated by gold and glory; she was motivated by the very throb of her heart and the singing of blood in her veins. They lost. She triumphed.

When she left on the back of an extinct beast to live her life among legends, her parents wept and wondered where they gone wrong. They wailed that they had loved her, coddled her, protected her and kept her always comfortable and safe. They did not realize that these were the very things that had driven her away.

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Please, dear reader, dear, kind, gentle reader; review! I'm feeling rather lonely with an average of three reviews per chapter, and so very many hits! Please just drop a word to say if you've been here, to say if I should stay the course or slink off into a corner and play solitaire and stay away from the written word! And while I'm at it, thanks to all those kind souls who have taken pity on my pathetic state and reviewed! 


	9. Insanity

I have no comment on this one. I'm not happy about it, but then, it's not a very happy ficlet. The prompt just sort of sparked this idea that wasn't necessarily that happy, or even that good, but by the time I realized that it had me by the muse and wouldn't let go. I don't know. I'll probably remain in a state of depression about it until I hear from all you kind reviewers out here.

My alert doesn't work. I wonder why...

At any rate, I'll shut up now and let you good folks get on with reading.

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The sun was setting over the Earth Kingdom. The sky was awash with smoky gold and violet hues, as though caught and frozen in the act of burning, scattered with the diffused glow of embers that might at any moment burst into flame. The sun itself sat red and trembling like a drop of blood or an errant flake of fire just above the horizon, spilling its pulsing red light down onto the hills and valleys of the wide kingdom, gilding the forests with red and gold. It brought on the ghost of an autumn that was still a few moons away, foreshadowing the slow death of a time-scorched land, turning the towns prematurely into abandoned wastelands, the trees to ashes and dust.

At least, that was the way it seemed to those who still dared to be out on the streets or peering out of windows in the twilight hour. Men with sense were locked safely inside their homes, with their children beside them and their windows shut and dark; as the sun seemed to drop a bit in the wavering sky, doors slammed shut across the nation, as though to protect those inside from the swift, soft evening wind or the warbling calls of owls from the dark spaces between the trees. Occasionally, in hidden shadows and narrow alleys and deserted hillsides, the dying light glinted on metal, sparkled on the horned helmets of soldiers that marched in leisurely columns, tramping in puffs of dust and showers of sparks across the kingdom. Sometimes the soldiers reached towns, and stopped at houses which they seemed to be drawn to by supernatural means, and banged on doors and spoke through wooden slats in voices that were flat and hollow but irresistible; then the waver and wail of desperation filled the air, like the sky going up in smoke.

Yet nowhere was the desperation so thick and so pervasive as in a high, beautiful manor house on a hill that crowned the outskirts of a small merchant town. Immersed in the blood of the dying day, framed by two magnificent peaks of mountains, the house cast an elegant, imposing silhouette on the town below. The last gleams of the sunlight were kind to its mighty façade; their golden lacquer glossed over its flaking masonry, its crumbling eaves, its boarded-up windows and its walls draped with brown and rotting ivy. The shadow cast by the house obscured the overgrown gardens, the collapsed and rotting outer buildings, the bones and wounds and scars of a once grand and mighty estate fallen into its death throes of disrepair.

Only the front parts of the main house had been upkept in something close to their former glory, with sculpted stonework adorning the doorways and streaks of white and brown against the walls where the ivy had been pulled and scraped away. Even here, the wide crumbling windows were locked and bolted against the onslaught of night; all save one, a broad gap in the masonry which looked down the hill away towards the roofs of the town which looked like only pebbles in the rearing shadow of the mountains. This window was protected from the sunset by the bulk of the house itself, and the room within was cast in darkness; all except for a single wavering pinpoint of light, like a candle flame, perched on the index finger of one of the two men who stood at the window's broad sill.

"Thank you so much for coming," one man near-whispered, his voice so low and soft and humble that it was almost lost below the threshold of hearing. The same desperation that streamed like smoke up from various towns and cities across the nation was present in his voice, but thickened and intensified, as though all of the sorrows of his countrymen had been distilled and compacted in those few words. His companion tilted his head to one side, as though listening to that low thrill of emotion rather than the actual words; he seemed to find it pleasing, for the flame on his fingertip vanished, and he turned and offered the same hand in a gesture that once, many many years ago, would have signified friendship. His companion grasped it, his movements strained and jerking, as though each twitch cost him energy beyond measure which could not be replenished; he grasped the hand held out to him as a drowning man grasps at the tops of the waves, hoping by that grip to pull himself back into the open air.

"Now, now, Lao," the second man said soothingly, pleasantly, as though oblivious to the pain in the other man's voice – or thriving on it. "There's no need for such barbarity. You know, of course, that for a man of your stature and importance in the kingdom, no possible service is too expensive or too dear. Now, would you care to show me the reason we are here?"

"Of course, my lord," Lao said hurriedly, bowing over the hand he held before releasing it, "Of course, how foolish of me. Right this way." He turned away from the window and darted into the dark twists and labyrinths of the house, plunging into rooms which had once been airy and well-lit but now had wooden slats hammered in across doors and windows, into hallways which looked as though they once might have been straight but had grown twisted and gnarled with age, like the roots of an ancient tree. Lao's robes, like the house itself, were shabby and patched but possessing an air of haunting, long-lost grandeur; their fine weave, the sylphlike glimmer of green, seemed nearly to glow in the abyssal darkness of the spacious manor, giving him the appearance of a ghost gliding through shadows.

His companion followed much less noiselessly, walking with the calm stride and solid footsteps of, not a ghost, but a king, or at the very least a torturer who knows he has gained complete control of his prey.

"Here we are, lord," Lao announced, reaching a deeper patch of shadow along one wall and pressing a hand to it, revealing a door that swung open noiselessly, as though in an effort to perpetuate the illusion that the house was really only the abode of spirits and ghosts. The interior of the room, however, was scattered with candles that guttered in their holders, producing a smoky warm half-light that painted the wooden wall in shades of amber and red; in the center of the floor stood a sturdy square table, and beyond that yet another door, under which could be seen a glimmer of light.

Lao led the other man into the room, indicating with a bow the parchment spread out on the table. Ignoring both the gesture and his host, the man strode over to the table and swept a hand across it, knocking the parchment to the floor along with an inkstand that smashed on the floorboards, shattering into a small pile of glass shards and puddle of black ink that looked, in the dying light, like blood.

"Very well, Lao," the man snapped, "Let us get down to business." He cupped his hands together and blew into the bowl formed by his fingers; his breath streamed out as fire, and in a moment he cupped a glowing ball of flames in both palms which, when lifted up, cast a brilliant light as strong as the dying sun into the smoky room. By its light, Lao managed to steal his first good look at his visitor; clad in the deep scarlet tunic of a Fire Nation citizen, and with the brilliant red cape clasped about his throat that marked him as an official, his lean and wiry frame twanged Lao's every instinct like a stretched-taut bowstring, shrilled every alarm of fear and panic formed in years of war and terror. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to run, to run from the man's drooping mustache and dagger-sharp eyes, to escape from the thin needle fingers that snapped together like flint and stone and contained a hidden trapspring energy that might burst into flame at any second…

Lao only closed his eyes, pressing a hand to his forehead to quell the sick leaden weight that rested there. He was too deeply weary, too tortured by the aches that wracked his body and soul, too old to be afraid.

"All right, Lao," the Fire Nation man snapped, rapping a finger on the table to draw Lao's attention. He had set the ball of flame into one of the candle holders, and its blazing light cast his profile into sharp detail. "Before I actually see her, there are few questions I need answered. When did this illness begin?"

"About two months ago, lord," Lao replied dutifully. "At the beginning of summer. She had been restless for several months more, and her tutor reported uncharacteristic inattention in her lessons, except for any lesson in which she was read stories. In history, in the study of books, she was greatly interested; then her mother and I began to notice strange changes in her behavior."

"Hmm." The official was leaning on the table, his head dropping down onto his chest, his eyes closed. "I see. Has she any talent for Earthbending?"

"A very little." The official's eyes snapped open, the slight slant of his eyebrows conveying his displeasure. "You see, I did not report it because she has so little power as to be of no consequence," Lao added hurriedly. "And then, of course, this strange illness came over her. You see, she has only just passed her twelfth birthday, the age when she would have been screened by His Majesty's agents."

"Very well." the man nodded, placated. "And her other… affliction, it still persists?"

"Yes, lord," Lao sighed, closing his own eyes to avoid looking into the man's face, afraid of seeing something he couldn't name, the sick pounding in his skull growing more pronounced. "She is blind."

There was a moment of silence. Lao stood waiting for the official to speak, his eyes closed, his head bowed, knowing full well the reason for the pause; the man had all of this information already, there was nothing new he had learned and no conclusions to come to that he had not already reached. The moment that stretched now into eternity, the considering silence, was only for the purpose of tormenting Lao, of letting him sweat in the aftermath of having confessed his deepest shame.

"Let me see her," the official commanded quietly, after an immeasurable time had passed. His voice was soft, and light, but the lightness was that of a finely-crafted sword slicing through air; it had the sharp edges and the potential to sting, to wound, if disobeyed.

Lao Beifong had been wounded once too often in his life, and had no wish to accumulate more scars than those he already possessed. He inclined his head in a half-bow, strode across the room to the door set in the wall behind the official's back, and threw it open, allowing the man a clear view into his daughter's room.

The window to the outside that gaped against the far wall, like all of the other windows in the house, had been covered over, but this window had been draped only with cloth instead of blocked with wood, so that the gray diffused ghost of sunlight managed to slip through, casting the entire room into a murky shadow. There was no other source of light; the brilliance of the flame set in the antechamber threw a spear of gold on the floor, stabbing into the darkness like the first flare of a rising sun. Standing with his back to the light of the antechamber, Lao could barely make out the dark shape, a more solid darkness than the gray around it, of a wooden bedframe pressed against one wall, all the furniture the room contained; and perched on that shadow, a deeper shadow yet, but one with more pronounced dimensions, that moved occasionally, a quick jerk of muscle or whisper of cloth.

The Firebender shoved unceremoniously past his host, stepping into the darkness of the room and snapping his fingers. A light sprang to life in the palm of his hand, throwing into sharp relief the bare, prison-cell walls, the bed with its dusty and rumpled sheets – and, atop the bed, the small, harrowed frame of a twelve-year-old girl, curled up into herself and trembling.

"Hello, Toph," the Firebender said loudly, his voice echoing off of the wooden walls, bouncing back at oddly-timed intervals from dark corners which the light could not seem to penetrate. "Your father has brought me here to see you. How are you feeling today?"

The small silhouette on the bed uncurled itself, revealing a small, pale girl whose thick raven-dark hair cascaded down over her shoulders, hung down into smoky green eyes obscured by the silvered cataracts of blindness. She was clad in a soiled silk robe that hung loosely on her frame, giving her an appearance that was almost skeletal; her feet, the Firebender noticed as she swung them over the edge of the bed, were bare.

She turned her head towards the door, her blank eyes scanning the darkness, as though blindness was no obstacle to sight and she was examining the intruder, perhaps determining whether he was a threat. Finally, as the Firebender stood patiently waiting, she yawned, stretched, and whined, "What, is that Fire Nation bastard back again?"

"Do you know who I am, Toph?" the Firebender asked calmly, but she had turned her head away as though he did not exist and was staring instead at where the window would have been.

"Katara, didn't I tell you to keep your pet Firebender away from me? If he wants to travel with us I'll let him, for his uncle's sake, but I don't want to talk to him. Hear me, Scarface? Go be a pathetic whining banished prince somewhere else."

The Fire Nation official turned to where Lao waited at the threshold of the room, beckoning him forward with a wave of one long, delicate hand. "Toph," Lao called, stepping into the musty darkness of his daughter's bedroom, "Toph, can you hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you, Sokka," Toph yawned, brushing her hair out of her empty eyes. "You were only snoring all night. I swear, you're worse than Appa." She fell silent for a moment, head cocked to one side, as though listening. "No, I'll handle packing up, I'm better at the heavy lifting than you anyway. Go help Aang gather firewood or something, all right?" Another pause, and Toph slid from the bed, stomping one foot on the floor, hard; she adopted that odd listening pose again, then smirked. "Serves you right, Snoozles!" she shouted, far too loudly for the small confines of the bedroom. "That's what you get for messing with the Greatest Earthbender in the World!"

"Delusions of grandeur," the Fire nation official murmured over his shoulder to Lao, who only stood, his shoulders slumped, head bowed under the weight of defeat, of shame. "You should have sent for help earlier, man," the Firebender snapped, though there was no bite behind it and he seemed more interested than upset. "There's little to do with an illness this advanced."

"Toph," Lao called, as though his daughter were far, far away. Desperation had congealed again in his voice, thick and jarring, dark and insidious, corrosive. "Toph, darling, you must listen to me. I'm your father, don't you understand? Your father…"

Toph grew very still, standing with both feet firmly planted on the wooden floor, hands hanging limply at her sides, for so long that the Firebender began to wonder absently if she had stopped breathing. Then, as though moving through water or in a dream, with an agonizing slowness, she turned her head, her milky white gaze darting to where she had heard Lao's voice. "Father?" she asked, in a voice that was small and weak and trembling, the mere ghost of the strong brazen tones she had called out with in the grip of delusion. "Father, is that you?"

"Yes, dear heart," Lao called, shouldering past the Fire Nation official now, relief thick in his voice. "Yes, Toph darling, it's me, your father." He shoved his way into the room until he was standing before her; he knelt down so that he no longer towered over her, he reached out and gently took her small, smooth hands in his large rough ones. "Toph, I've brought someone to help you," he said softly, pleadingly, as though begging his daughter to understand. "I've brought someone who can solve all of our problems, someone who will see to it that you're taken care of…"

They stayed like that for a long moment; then, with small, distressed movements as though fighting to rouse herself from some deep thick nightmare, Toph shook her head, pulling her hands free of his grip. "I don't need to be taken care of," she insisted, still in the small weak voice of a sick child, but with an undertone of determination now, of hidden strength and rock-hard solidity. "I don't need help. I can… I'm the best Earthbender in the world. I can tear down this house. I can escape. I can…" she trailed off for a moment, then rallied, her unblinking eyes fixed unnervingly on her father's face. "I have to escape," she said forcefully, "I have to teach Aang how to Earthbend by the end of the summer. It's very important… by the end of the summer… to save the world…"

"It's almost autumn," Lao whispered pleadingly, but Toph was shaking her head now, violently, as though trying to rid herself of some demon whispering in her ear, screeching in her head.

"No!" she cried, fighting to escape from her father's grip, "No! You can't keep me here! You and mother always tried to keep me locked in, and locked up, to keep me smothered and safe! I don't need you, either of you, I don't need anyone! I can do it myself! I'm the greatest Earthbender in the world, I can do anything… I can… I have to leave, father, by the end of the summer…" She trailed off into silence again, breathing hard, pulling feebly against Lao's hands around her wrists, though he did not let go. "I'll get out of here," she repeated, with the immovable certainty of mountains. "I'll get out, you'll see. They'll come for me, Aang and Katara and Sokka and even Zuko. Iroh will make him. They'll come for me, and break me out, and we'll go kill Azula and the Fire Lord and his army and his minions. We'll kill Long Feng and the Dai Li, just watch. We'll end the war. We'll save the world."

"Toph," Lao moaned, "Toph, you must listen to me, you must understand, I only want to help you. Toph, there is no war –"

But she couldn't hear him anymore. She had stopped trying to struggle away from him, and now only stood still, blank eyes peering at some mysterious distance over his shoulder; "Wait for me, I'm coming!" she called, brightly, joyfully, all tension and fear evaporated like smoke, all anger flowing out of her as quickly as it had come. "Aang! Aang, get Sokka he's about to – don't eat that, you moron! Katara, can't you keep your brother under control?" Lao released her hands and stood watching helplessly as she slid into an Earthbending stance, sliding one foot out along the ground. She waited, and some sound echoed back to her from the far shores of her imagination, for then she burst out laughing, doubled over in mirth. "Ha! That'll keep him quiet for a while! Didn't I tell you, Sokka? Serves you right!"

"Those aren't delusions," the Fire Nation official said from the doorway. Lao turned around to face the other man, feeling his stomach turn to lead as he followed the Firebender out into the real world of dusk and dust and silence, away from his daughter's brightly-colored jaunts through fantasy. "At least, they're not entirely delusions," the Firebender amended, beckoning Lao out of the room and shutting the door behind him, leaving Toph to her laughter. "You said she was very interested in history, just before she fell ill?"

Lao nodded, feeling the dread listlessness of despair overtake him. His vision blurred, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes focused on the thin, lean face of the Firebender, retain what semblance of polite attention that he could. Thankfully, the man peered down at his own hands as he spoke, freeing Lao from the burden of his scrutiny. "Those people she mentioned," he continued, far too casually. "Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Iroh, Azula – they were all real people, once. This is not a bit of history generally taught to children in this civilized day and age, you understand, so I will want a word with the tutor who exposed her to it." Lao thought that perhaps he had spoken, but he seemed to have given some kind of confirmation, for after a brief glance up the Firebender continued with his tale. "A hundred years ago, just seasons before the first Emperor of Flame united all four nations under one glorious rule, a young boy named Aang began masquerading as the Avatar, a folk legend that was very popular with the primitive country dwellers of the day. He claimed to be descended from an extinct race of legendary Airbenders, and he told those who met him that, after having been frozen in an iceberg for a century, he had returned to master all four elements and 'rescue' them from the Fire Nation's protection." The Firebender snorted to express his opinion of this idea, and glanced up at Lao, who remained impassive. "Of course, the story was complete nonsense," the Firebender added. "The things he claimed were all impossible. He did, however, manage to discover that a solar eclipse would occur at the end of the summer, and latched onto the wild idea of attacking the Fire Nation when we would be, according to him at least, powerless."

The Firebender smiled, showing teeth that appeared, to Lao's fog-filled mind, the pointed fangs of a predator closing in for the final kill. "Naturally, he was defeated and killed long before the eclipse ever happened," he said in a voice that was closed to a satisfied purr. "Those closest to him – traitors to the Fire Nation and deluded Water Tribe peasants – later confessed under torture that they believed his defeat was caused by that fact that he had not been able to find someone to teach him Earthbending." he shrugged, growing weary of Lao's lifeless leaden stare. "Your daughter, in her madness, has latched on to those old stories and believes she is that teacher. The only problem, of course, is that she was born a hundred years too late. The Emperor of Flame is merciful, and will not punish her for such blasphemous delusions, for of course we cannot control what we dream up in the fever of madness."

"Of course," Lao said woodenly, his survival instincts noting a change in the timbre of the smile which indicated that a response of some kind was expected. The Firebender nodded, pleased.

"Now," he said lazily, "Let us discuss the matter of treatment. I can write a letter to the head of Lake Laogai – oh, don't be an idiot, man," he snapped, noting the instinctive look of horror and fear that stole across Lao's features at the mention of that infamous name. "I'm sure you've heard the usual ghost stories and peasant rumors, but really, the people here are so uncivilized, you can't believe their age-old prejudices," the Firebender snarled. "It's no longer the torture chamber that it was under the Earth King; now it's a perfectly respectable facility, to aid those who have trouble coming to grips with the Flame Emperor's rule, or have fallen rebel delusions or the influence of traitors. Now, your daughter's blindness may present some obstacles, but I believe that Lake Laogai is her best chance for recovery."

"Yes, sir," Lao replied, quelling the memories of men that moved like walking corpses, weeping mothers and wives, children pale and quiet and speaking only when spoken to, as though they had had the souls cut out of them. He suppressed the images of people strapped to chairs, of barred cell doors and windows that had haunted him ever since his last and only visit to the 'proper facility' that Lake Laogai had become. His mouth was dry, he could hear his heart beating in his ears. He closed his eyes again. The Fire Nation soldiers kept the people safe, kept him safe, kept his daughter safe. If displeased them, she would be in danger. To send her to Lake Laogai… it was the only way to keep her safe.

"Of course, sir," he heard himself replying, his own voice echoing back to him as though across some great vast gulf of darkness. "Whatever you believe is best."

"Excellent." The Firebender reached down and picked up the crumpled parchment that he had knocked to the floor, picked up a shard of the smashed inkbottle, dipped it into the ink stain still drying on the floor, and scrawled something swift and illegible which he then folded into Lao's hand. "You will give that to the director of Lake Laogai, when you take your daughter there for treatment three days from now," he said smoothly. "It has been a pleasure, of course. I shall convey your regards to the Flame Emperor." He flashed that predatory smile again, then strode to the door and flung it open without a word.

Lao stood paralyzed by his own grief as his daughter's laughter slipped under the door from the next room and the flames in the candle holder guttered out, leaving him alone in the ash-cold darkness of the coming night.

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Review, please! Anonymous reviews are now allowed! Oh, by the way, constructive criticism is as welcome as praise, but what I don't like (or understand) is a review that consists of "grins". I don't know what that means. Are you grinning because you like it, or because you're laughing at me, or because you have some secret plot to take over the world that the rest of us don't know about? Just for the record, I'm with the penguins...

Don't mind me. I'm just a silly ranting authoress, leaving you now with the eternal plea of writers everywhere: Review!


	10. Memory

Nothing like going back to school to get the creative juices flowing, eh? I had to think long and hard about this one to come up with something that wasn't completely hackneyed and cliched; I think I did a good job, but that will be up to you lovely folks to decide.

I've been thinking about combining parts of this, along with some other prompts I have half-written, into a fic of their very own, on the theme of Toph-goes-back-Gaoling, and what happens. If I decide to do it, twill be fun. Until then, enjoy!

Oh, and a belated Happy New Year to all!

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They had arrived in the dead of night, like thieves, their ostrich-horses kept to a slow walk which they were all too grateful for after days of running, their large clawed feet stepping softly and noiselessly in the dust of the road, the jangling and glittering metal buckles on their harnesses wrapped in cloth or blackened by soot. Even so, Toph was nervous and strung-tight, clenching the pommel of her mount's saddle in white-knuckled fists, holding her breath for long moments to feel the wide, cool darkness around her, too cold for daylight, to listen to the skittering of small creatures in the underbrush and the hooting of catowls in the trees, to feel the cool sweet kiss of the night breeze and listen as it rustled leaves far above her head. She listened to the sleeping murmurs of the world around her, cherished the ache in her own arms and the weariness like a leaden cloak over her body, to reassure herself that all was indeed swathed in the darkness of night (she was nervous that her senses would deceive her). 

A twig cracking up ahead in the darkness blasted into her (straining, listening) senses like a sudden snap of thunder; so tense and tightly clenched was she that anger ripped into furious life in her gut immediately, energy pounding to be released, nervousness flaring into rage with alarming speed; she had _told _him, she had tried to impress upon Sokka the need to enter quietly, unheard, unseen, she would smash his skull in with the largest boulder she could find, she would bury him in earth up to his ears, she would…

A sharp jab of pain jolted her out of her violent fantasies, a quick sting on her bare arm like the flicking caress of a whip; underneath her, she could feel the muscles of the ostrich-horse rolling, expanding and contracting as it skittered sideways in the dust, let out a low distressed grumble as it sensed its rider's tension. The stinging, she realized numbly, must have been the edges of its mane catching her skin as it tossed its head.

That slight distraction had been enough, and the furious crackling anger collapsed back into itself, deprived of fuel, leaving behind only cold ashes and a deeper, hollower emptiness than that which it had filled.

The night was changing around her, the lush scent of trees and flowers fading and growing more scattered, the slight cold wind growing stronger, without the confines of the forest to ensnare it in a maze of branches or deflect its path. The trees were gone, she could hear the difference in the acoustics of the world around her, hear the vacuum of wide open space replace the close, confined echoes of a tree-lined path. They had emerged from the forest onto an outcropping of rock, and Toph knew that Sokka would be able to see the roofs of the village that was their destination, houses looking like river rocks from such a great height, spread out down below.

Toph's bare feet dangled on either side of the ostrich-horse, hanging woefully above the ground, but she could still vaguely sense the earth underneath her, and that vague flavor of dirt in her mind had lost the rich shading of loam and tree-roots and was growing drier, dustier, tainted with stone.

"All right back there, Toph?"

The voice came drifting back to her from far ahead in the unfathomable blackness, already tattered and torn by the wind; even so, it startled her, deeper and richer and more textured than the skittering squawks of small animals and the grunting of the ostrich-horses that had been the only breaches of the night's silence. A sudden snarling, uncontrollable fear leaped to life in Toph's heart and clamped its icy jaws around her throat; for the first time in hours, she pried her fingers away from the edge of the saddle (they had been clenched there so long the muscles ached) and buried her hands in the feathers that covered her ostrich-horse's shoulders. She dug her fingers into their soft warmth, feeling with slight tinglings of pleasure the life and energy of the beast as it moved under her hands; then slowly, carefully, she slid her hands up the animal's neck, trailing her fingers through its deep feathers, never letting her palms touch the open air. The ostrich-horse clacked its beak and grumbled with pleasure at her touch, almost a purr; she continued working her way up until she touched the curving bones of its jaw, her arms stretched upward to reach its head up the length of its long neck, her entire body angled forward, all attention focused in her fingertips as she touched her mount's bridle, felt the small metal buckles where the reins connected to the bit, and felt those small leather straps leading away, out into the darkness. She knew that, further along the trail, they were tied securely to the back of Sokka's saddle; he had insisted on it, after she had fallen off three times (the bruises still stung), and she had let him insist, grumbling only a little, making only the mildest of threats (she was even beginning to miss Appa. The bison at least had a broad enough back that no one ever fell off). In that moment, she imagined that they glowed with warmth, a vibrant connection that kept her from being swept away by her own fear, kept her anchored in the darkness (kept her from being alone).

Another twig cracked, and Toph jumped, startled, but managed to keep from erupting into fury again; she told herself that she was overreacting, that she was being paranoid and ridiculous, that secrecy no longer meant their lives, as it once had creeping through forests being pursued by men with flaming hands and flying knives. Now, their furtive approach was purely her own folly; Sokka had protested, guessing the fear that lay at the root of her demands (damn him) and trying to force her to overcome it, but Toph had triumphed, as she always did. Truth be told, he hadn't protested too vehemently; he had been able to implement the new 'sneak techniques', as he called them, that he had spent long boring weeks devising in the stagnant luxury of the Earth King's palace in Ba Sing Se. Toph remembered, with a slight smile she was too preoccupied to suppress, his happy chatter as he explained to her in great detail how to wrap the metal of the harnesses in cloth, how to muffle the hooves of a mount, how to move quietly in various terrain. No, he had been happy enough demonstrating to her sightless eyes how science could be used to conquer all problems (and, she secretly suspected, to have a chance to show off, with Aang and Katara safely back in the walled city).

No, it was only because she had insisted on it that Toph re-entered the town of Gaoling for the first time in years under the cloaking cover of darkness, shoulders tensed and hands entwined in her steed's feathers, as though afraid the earth was going to drop out from under their feet.

There was a slight change in the direction of the wind, a sudden tilt downwards, angling into its icy touch, and then they were descending, their sedate pace slowing even further as the ostrich-horses picked their way gingerly down a slope that Toph knew from experience (those joyous nights escaped and running wild) was scattered with rocks.

Then the slope leveled out again, and a new swirl of sound welled up to replace the lost rustlings and chatterings of the forest; the soft hubbub of conversation slipping out through windows and under doors, the rush of speech without discernible words, the clack of wheels and hooves and talons on cobblestones. Somewhere, a flute played, and a woman sang along with it; children laughed and shrieked, dogfoxes barked. It was the sound of many ordinary people going about their lives on an evening in late spring when the skies were clear and the wind was almost cold. It was only Toph's imagination that heard a low, sinister growl underneath the pleasant wash of noise, a threatening rumble of crumbling mountains, and maybe even of rattling chains.

She shuddered and closed her empty eyes. She had been told how, from the village, the stately manor that sprawled out on the hills above the town could be seen haloed against the night sky, lit by the golden glow of fires from within, standing proud and tall with the great stone image of the winged boar looking down on the puny mortals so far below.

The gentle shudder and sway of the ostrich-horse's gait slowed, and stopped, surprising her out of her contemplations; up ahead, she heard the slight clatter and clink of Sokka dismounting, strained to hear above the ambient sounds the leather soles of his boots hitting the ground. With a sigh of relief that she could not contain, she swung herself down from the ostrich-horse's back. Her bare feet came in contact with the cobblestones that lined the street, and the world came bursting back into her consciousness, flowering behind her eyes with astonishing speed, painting itself out before her; the dizzying maze of the streets and back alleys, dirt floors and footsteps like a thousand interlocking drums spreading out for miles, the hummingbird whir of heartbeats repeated so many times as to be inseparable from infinity. It felt so good, the return of sight, the earth rushing in to fill the place it normally occupied in her senses and in her soul, to take up a place she hadn't known was empty until it had been filled. She stood for a long moment, casting her senses out through her feet, feeling the upward curves of the hills and the deep veins of rock, with one hand on the ostrich-horse's shoulder, feeling the fast but strong jab of its heartbeat, its deep whistling breaths, and then behind her a set of footsteps and a silhouette that was almost as familiar and as welcome as the earth itself.

"Well?" Sokka asked, and there was a grin in his voice (he was glad to see her so happy at being able to feel the earth again, but she would never know that). "It's your town. Where do you want to go?" There was another question hanging off the edge of his words, casually unspoken, but they both heard it ringing in their little private silence; _Will it be tonight?_

"No," she said aloud, and neither one of them noticed that the question she had answered hadn't actually been spoken. "No, I don't want to go tonight. I think there's an inn just around the corner." A pause; she felt the vibrations of muscles clenching shivering down his form as he nodded, and cherished the sensation. "Take these stupid animals with you. I'll meet you there a little later, okay?"

He didn't answer, and she swore she could _hear_ his uncertainty, his worry, or maybe could feel it as a tangible pressure on her skin, like sunlight, like wind. She knew that he was fighting an internal battle, torn between his own instincts, which would tell him that she was lying and afraid, and his better judgment, which would tell them that Toph could take on the entire Fire Nation single-handedly if she wanted to and right now she wanted to be left alone and if he contradicted that wish he would be much the worse for wear.

Toph waited in silence as the gears turned in Sokka's head, shifting her weight idly from foot to foot, just listening to the earth beneath her. She knew that Sokka considered himself her protector on this trip, and she knew that he remembered all of the times when protecting her had earned him a pebble flicked at his head hard enough to bruise. She really wasn't sure which outcome she would prefer, but she was getting tired of waiting for him to make a decision, and the ostrich-horses were growing restless, wanting to be fed, and the noise of the city rose and fell like ocean waves all around them.

Finally he gave in to experience and survival reflexes; Toph felt him nod again, and then he was walking away, and the ostrich-horse turned its head and blew a warm gust of air on her arm and then was trotting away down the cobblestone street, ripples of sound and stone glinting into her earth-sight with each strike of its great clawed feet against the ground.

Toph waited until Sokka had rounded a corner and was gone; then she turned, picking a direction almost at random, making certain only that it led away from the high hill and the house enshrined at its top. She walked swiftly and easily through dirt back alleyways, cutting through yards and behind houses, opening holes in garden walls and bending iron gates out of her way (though she made sure always to bend them back again), moving away towards the edge of town, towards where the houses petered out and then were gone, giving out onto the open country. A sudden need for flight had seized her, a desperate longing to be out in the clean open air, away from wooden floors and ostrich-horses, where she could dig her toes into the dirt and see for miles; she had started out at a calm, sedate walk, the wish for solid stone only a slight tremor in her mind, but as she moved further away from Sokka (and all hint of familiarity) and as the easy movement of walking and the solid support of the earth brought a surge of energy back to her aching limbs, she sped up, moving faster and faster, suddenly uneasy. The noise of the town continued all around her, and now that Sokka was gone she had realized that this was not just another town to stop in and be feasted by and perhaps save, this was _her_ town, _the _town, the town she had been dreading and avoiding for years, the only place in the world with the potential power to trap her, hold her, tie her down. As she walked faster and faster, she imagined a sudden shadow at her back, breathing down her neck, though she knew that if she listened through the earth up behind her she would feel only the rising curve of the hill, then a blank as she encountered the floors of the manor, which were made of wood...

Then she was running, her own heart thundering and the earth thundering in time with her as her footsteps pounded cracks in the cobblestones, she found herself longing desperately to be free of the confines of wood and lies, she found herself wanting to be away from the village and its people, its heat, its noise, its stone that was tame and pliant and shaped into walls and houses; she wanted the wild earth, the rugged mountains, boulders jagged and sharp enough to cut steel, she wanted to tear the bedrock up and smash it into pebbles, she wanted to rip up the roots of a mountain just to prove to herself that she was strong enough, because this place sapped her strength and made her docile, made her weak. She was afraid that her will and her independence, her soul, was draining out through the soles of her feet into this tainted earth, she was afraid that the cobblestones would do to her as she had done to so many others, turn to quicksand and harden again once she had sunk in up to her ankles, and she would be trapped, snared back into the web of lies and fairy-tale sentiments that had kept her prisoner her entire childhood. She ran, gasping for breath now, she ran and underneath her the earth shook, her steps thundered in small three-foot-wide earthquakes, she was not crying because she did not allow herself to cry but if she had been crying it would have felt a lot like this.

Then she was free, hurtling past the last house in the village like breaking the surface of the ocean after having almost drowned; without noticing she had curved the earth up under her feet until she was skating on it, being carried on swells of rock, her feet never leaving the ground. She glided on her strange supports out of the end of the last street where it faded out and was reclaimed by the wilderness, she fairly flew out into the rough, craggy patches of exposed stone at the foot of the hills, which further on turned into the mountains, and there collapsed, falling to her knees and digging her hands into the earth, feeling the dirt work itself under her fingernails. The reality of what she was doing still throbbed in her skull (_oh god I'll never see the outside again never get free never go back they'll catch me catch me kill me what have I done_) but being close to the earth helped, helped to drown out the roaring of panic with its eternal, endless calm, helped to soothe her jangling nerves with its immovable steadfastness.

Yet even the earth itself was not strong enough to drown out the memories clamoring at the back of her mind, screaming and pounding, pulsing, and then they were too strong and too many for her fragile control and they broke loose –

_Toph was four years old, and breathless, standing rooted to the ground, with the horrid new shoes somewhere out behind her stuck in the mud, but they didn't matter because, for the first time in her entire life, she could see, and all the fairy tales would come true and Mother and Father would love her and she would be allowed to go with the maid into the town and she could have friends, real friends, and be a real person and live in the world. She was so lost in her happy fantasies that she didn't hear the lady-in-waiting approach behind, didn't realize until too late that she was being fetched back into the house, ripped away from the earth and her newfound roots so suddenly that it was painful, it hurt to lose that newfound sight, and then Mother and Father didn't believe her when she told them._

_She was six years old and learning Earthbending, and she was so excited, so desperate to feel that lovely shivering sight again, that it hurt like a knife wound when they told her that she could not remove her shoes, she was doing only breathing exercises and basic forms. That night when she was brought back home and left unsupervised for a moment she tore the stupid things off and smashed them with rocks; when her parents returned they scolded her for tearing up her shoes and locked her in her room, shut her into a wooden prison cell with darkness and an open window that let in the sounds of the outside world, taunting her, calling her, and the good solid earth right under her windowsill, just out of her reach._

_She was seven and burning, shivering with fever, screaming and crying and pleading to be allowed to go outside, out to where she could see, to where she could fall asleep and be protected by walls of living stone and quench the fire that scorched her against the cool rock of the mountains, out where she could see and she could breathe. Her mother fainted; one maid held the screaming Toph down to the bed while another shut and locked the great thick wooden door._

_Then she was twelve, crying and pleading again, but the tears were wrenched from much deeper this time, an aquifer welling up through layers of stone, and the pleas were calm and logical and shuddering with desperation. She stood tall and proud as though on trial before her father and asked him for her freedom, her friends, her life. He answered in euphemisms and commands, and then she could feel the gulf of time stretching out before her, endless, dark, and bleak…_

With an iron control and a manic fury, driven by the deep lung-clenching need for air, Toph beat the memories back, wrestled them back down to the deepest gulf of her soul and fought to forget them, her entire body shaking, her hands buried entirely in the earth now, up to her wrists; she felt sick, a deep leaden soul-sickness that shamed her because it made her want to flee, and scared her because it made her want to fight. She focused all of her attention into her hands and knees, into the slow movements of the earth, into the mountains that had taken millennia to form and would take eons to crumble, into the depth that stretched down further than even her earth-sense could reach. She was breathing heavily, searching desperately through the jagged edges of the planet, searching for solace, searching for peace as though hoping to unearth and dig it up, like diamonds or gold.

Then something caught her attention, a welcome diversion buried down there far past where any but the most gifted Earthbenders would detect it, a strangeness in the rock foundation of the land, a patch of blankness where no blankness should have been. Panic quelled by curiosity, Toph gulped down a deep breath and focused all of her energies on that distant gap, feeling around its edges, probing its depths. It was formed of rock, lined with rock, much larger than she had first guessed; an empty open chamber, sunk down where it would be almost undetectable to anyone not searching for it, with a stone plateau in the center and rows of stone rising away from it in growing concentric rings, atop one another, on all sides to the very back of the stadium.

For a stadium is what it was; she had recognized it, incredibly, impossibly, but as she felt further into it there could be no doubt. The Earth Rumble stadium, the arena of shimmering heat and blurring noise that had kept her alive as a child; long abandoned, the stone cold with the touch of death and the ravages of years, it had somehow kept from being collapsed, somehow persisted deep underneath the earth long after it had faded from the minds and memories of those who had built it.

Yet even within the stadium itself there was something else that tugged at her consciousness, something odd and out of place, a mystery within a paradox; concentrating to see past the fog of distance, she felt a bizarrely shaped stone sprouting from the center of the battlefield, rising from the stone table that had seen so many fights won and champions dethroned. It was shaped like – her blank eyes widened, but again it was irrefutable – like a human silhouette. Someone had molded a statue in the center of the arena, possibly the last act of Earthbending before the natural tunnels to the surface had been closed and the bubble in the earth was abandoned, left to collapse on its own back into its component bedrock and boulders.

Toph closed her eyes; it made no difference in the level of darkness around her, but it helped to calm her, helped her focus, helped her shut out all the noise and the pressure and sound of the world around her. Slowly, her fingers moving in the dirt, she traced the figure, from the soles of its feet fused into the stone of the arena, up the short legs, clad in breeches, further still up to the torso, up the arms raised over the head in a victory salute (it was a large statue, but the proportions were wrong, were those of a child), and between the upthrust hands a ribbon of stone draping down; she recognized the texture and shape of the championship belt. The head was tilted upwards, as though admiring the belt, the mouth stretched into a fiendish grin, two odd oval protrusions just above the ears, a lump on the back of the head – a bun? – and the eyes…

The eyes were blank and smooth, without the carved grooves that would represent the pupil, or the iris; they were white, and dead, and empty.

She had made Sokka trace her name out in the dirt once, and had learned the letters, felt the lines, memorized the shape of them against the ground. _Toph_. After that, she had made him trace her other name, her better name, the one that fit down deep where her soul turned into shale, and she had learned that one, too. She had never expected to feel it again, let alone on the pedestal of a statue carved miles underground in an abandoned fighting arena, but there it was, as undeniable as her own heartbeat, and just as strong.

_The Blind Bandit_.

She could not read the words that followed, the meaningless points and curves and angles, but she could guess what they read, down there where no other living soul would ever read them; _Greatest Earthbender in the World._

Then another memory rose up at the back of her mind, a memory that had been beaten down by panic, had been quelled by terror and forgotten in the emotional upheaval of returning to the prison that had held her for so many years. She stayed still, and silent, waiting for it to coalesce into something tangible and real; she remembered the sunlight thrill of triumph singing in her veins, she remembered the roar of the crowd coursing up through her entire body, she remembered that indescribable surge of vicious pride and wild freedom as she lifted that belt over her head, buoyed up by the crowd screaming and stomping their feet and tearing up boulders and smashing them together, pebbles as fireworks, in celebration. She remembered the fierce joy of living, and winning, and fighting, and she knew in that instant that no wooden prison could ever hold her again, not after she had tasted the freedom of the world and fought all those who challenged her and won. That moment, kneeling there in the dust looking down at the only monument to her own greatness, she felt the pressure of tears in her chest evaporate to be replaced with the strong, throbbing bursts of laughter, and the memories of darkness and fear dissipated like smoke, freeing her to stand, to raise her arms over her head in a mockery of that lost victory salute, feeling the dead arena and its monument through the soles of her feet and drawing from it the strength she needed, the strength she had always had but had forgotten in the press of childhood fears and old regrets. She was older now, and stronger, and there would never be a monster, be it winged boar or human being, that could make her forget who she was.

She did not know how long she stood there, completely calm and peaceful for the first time in weeks, content only to feel the earth beneath her feet and the wide spaces of the night around her, but she knew that after a while she heard the soft rhythmic drumbeat of footsteps, shivering through the earth to warn her of someone approaching, someone in leather boots and with a very familiar silhouette, someone who walked slowly and firmly, almost slamming each foot against the ground, as though trying to make absolutely certain that she knew where he was, and that he was coming.

"Hello, Sokka," she called, when she judged him to be within earshot. He didn't bother to return the greeting, only continued walking until he was standing directly before her, much taller than she remembered, the warmth of his skin bleeding into the cold night air and pressing on the skin of her bare arms. She tilted her head back, for a moment mirroring her stone shadow's pose, and flashed him a dazzling grin. "What's the matter?" she asked. "Did you get nervous without me? Need me to hold your hand?"

He only stayed silent for a moment; she could feel his gaze resting on her, though the tone of his silence was inscrutable, and she only waited, still grinning (he was looking at her rumpled clothes, at the tear tracks winding down the dust that covered her face, at the way she stood straight and relaxed and completely at ease. He would never say it, but he was thinking how glad he was to see her as herself again).

"I got the ostrich-horses settled and our stuff unpacked at the inn," he said finally, neglecting to mention the series of trenches carved in the cobblestone streets of Gaoling, which had led him out to this bare forsaken patch of rock. "I paid the owner for one night. How long do you think we'll be staying?" There was that unspoken question again, dangling off into the pause after his sentence, but this time it was neither frightening nor threatening; Toph dug her toes into the ground, just to remind herself.

"Just tonight," she told him, sensing him let loose a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, pleasantly surprised. "Tomorrow," she declared, "We're going up the hill to the manor. Tomorrow, I'm going home."

* * *

And there you have it. I hope you liked it, but I don't know until you press that little blue button, do I? 

Oh, just a bit of random speculation: I've been wondering how Toph would do with stuff like sedimentary rock, fossils, stuff like that, stuff that isn't actually dirt and stone but gets classified as rock. Just a thought.


	11. Home

This one is... well, itself. I'm probably going to come under fire for this, but that's all right, because I like it.

I don't think the Beifongs are bad people. Arrogant, yes; stupid, certainly, but not _bad_. I think they genuinely care for Toph, and just picked the wrong way to go about it. They're a bit like the Earth King; useless and deluded, in desperate need of a smack in the face and waking-up.

Warning! You're heading very fast for a very large fiery black hole!

Well, actually, you're not. You are heading very fast for some severe Tokka, so no like, no read.

This one is a semi-continuation of the last one, kinda sorta. They take place in the same place, at least. This would be the morning after 'Memory'. Enjoy!

* * *

Sokka had spent the end of his childhood and the beginning of his adult life flying across the face of the world on the back of a legendary ten-ton flying sky bison. He had fought in the world-shaking assault on the Fire Nation palace; he had been one of the weary and bloodstained few standing in the throne room at the defeat of the tyrannous Fire Lord Ozai, he had held the man's flame-shaped crown in his hands before it had been melted to a dribble of gold that stained the marble floor. Sokka had consulted with generals and princes and leaders, he had commanded armies, crowned kings, sunk ships and built cities. He had spent the better part of four years in a constant battle for his own life and the lives of his friends, against various enemies of differing strengths but all sharing a single intent; to tear his limbs from his body, and then possibly to roast those limbs. He had not let them accomplish this. He had been offered the chieftainship of the southern Water Tribe, but had declined it; he had crept into dark caverns and soared over mountaintops, he had sailed oceans and stormed palaces. He had fought alongside the Avatar, a powerful Waterbender, a banished Fire Nation prince who would someday be given control of the nation that had rejected him, and the (self-styled) Greatest Earthbender in the World.

He did not understand why a simple wrought-iron gate could make him feel so _small_.

The swell of fear and adrenaline that surged through him as he stood unreasonably cold under the hot glare of the midsummer sun could be described in no other terms. He knew intellectually that for purposes of easy motion the gates could not possibly be as high as they seemed, but the gates had not been informed of that impossibility, and the knowledge did not keep them from rearing up towards the sky in a very threatening manner indeed. And though Sokka also knew that wood carvings were very definitely not alive, he was forced to acknowledge that the winged boar carved into the arch above the gates was leering down at him with a sneer that was much too predatory for his liking. He would not have been at all surprised if, with the slightest provocation, the mythical animal had leapt down from its lofty perch and set about on a campaign to terrorize the countryside, toppling buildings, tearing apart fields of crops, eating young maidens, that sort of thing.

_Speaking of maidens…_

Sokka shuddered and tore himself from his gory thoughts. If just standing outside the house was having this effect on him, he couldn't begin to imagine what it was doing to his traveling companion.

He glanced to the side, looking down (much less further down than only a few months ago, he noted) at the profile of that selfsame Earthbender, who had traveled with the Avatar and endured many frightening adventures herself. Toph had walked silently at his side all the way up from the village of Gaoling and now had stopped before the gates; she stood with her feet slanted sideways in the dust of the road, anchored into an Earthbending stance that he knew could not be shaken even by the mightiest of gales. She was breathing deeply, her blank eyes focused on some mysterious distance, utterly immobile, and Sokka knew she was submersing herself into the schooled calm of what she called listening to the earth; yet something was different now, something that nagged at the back of his brain. Her ankles were twisted out just a little too far, to a degree that looked almost painful; her shoulders were far too tense, her breaths were deep but much too fast. She was not only solid, she was stiff, she was _rigid_; if Sokka had wished to have his head smashed in by a mountain of rock, he might have allowed himself to think that she was (incredibly, impossibly, inconceivably) afraid.

Even thinking that blasphemy, even allowing it to live locked behind his clenched teeth, would probably earn him a boulder in the face once Toph felt his gaze on her (as she always did) and guessed what was going through his mind; quickly he quelled the thought, glancing up at the carved boar again, pretending to study the exquisite details of the gust of wind that lifted the animal's wings.

Then, as soft and sudden as a sigh, he felt a gentle tug on his sleeve, a small rough dirty hand brushing his arm; with a grin he allowed himself because he knew she wouldn't see it, he clasped his hand around her wrist, his fingertips resting in her palm. It was the grip they used to keep hold of each other in the swirling heat of battle, to stay together while fleeing through darkness from an enemy that neither one could face alone.

She had been silent ever since sliding down from Appa's back in the town below when they had arrived two days ago, and she had not spoken a word all throughout the hours-long hike from the village to the mighty gates, but she spoke now, her voice startlingly hollow, rough from emotion or disuse. "Tell me the plan again," she said nervously (he must be delirious or dreaming, Toph was never nervous). "Tell me exactly what you told Katara before she left." She squeezed his hand, probably only to anchor herself as she shuffled her feet in the dust; Sokka returned the squeeze, giving her the support she was far too proud to seek.

"Aang and Katara are going back to Omashu," he recited promptly. "There's a merchant train leaving from Gaoling heading that way in a week. If that train arrives in Omashu and we're not with them, Katara will send Momo – or a carrier pigeon if Momo's eaten all the nuts in the Earth King's stores again." That startled a laugh from her, albeit a small one, and Sokka grinned as he felt her relax, felt her grip on his wrist loosen. "Aang estimates that it's a day and a half flight from here to Omashu. Counting that, they'll give us another week to reply to the message. If we don't, or if the reply doesn't contain a set of specific code words, they'll come tear down the walls to get us."

"Good," she muttered, half to herself, "Good." She was sliding her feet about in the dirt, as if to reassure herself that the earth was still there; the dust she kicked up settled onto her clothes, but made little difference in her appearance. She had chosen her grimiest and most tattered Earthbending clothes, Sokka noted with a blazing grin; the green burlap of the Blind Bandit's tunic sat snugly about her shoulders, and Sokka was mildly bemused to note that, at close range, dust and earth could be seen actually rubbed into the weave of the cloth. Her feet were bare, her glossy black hair twisted back into her habitual bun, held in place by the moth-eaten old headband adorned with its two little white fuzzballs that shook and bounced above her ears (Sokka knew that she hadn't worn that thing in years; it was a gesture of defiance, so quintessentially Toph that he had to bite back a laugh).

He was startled out of his contemplations by Toph herself, who yanked hard on his hand, turning her milky gaze to blaze a scorching glare just past his left ear. "Well?" she demanded, all hint of nervousness gone from her voice, replaced by the rock-steady confidence Sokka was used to hearing. "Are we going in, or are we just going to stand here all day? You might be a lazy bum, Snoozles, but some of us are trying to get on with our lives!"

Sokka didn't bother to reply. Instead, he flashed her a grin he knew she couldn't see and reached up to bang on the gates of the Beifong estate, the great iron monsters that suddenly seemed to stretch higher than ever before, high above all realms of possibility, reaching up to the clouds.

The boom of his fist impacting the iron echoed unpleasantly, almost surreally, in the golden midsummer afternoon, unnervingly like the slamming shut of a prison door. Sokka did not have to look around to feel that Toph was slipping back into the clutches of that hideous tension again, that defensive rigidity that he was already starting to hate. He kept his grip on her hand tight as the shouts of guards echoed up somewhere high above them and the gates swung inwards, revealing a wide grassy swath of gardens streaked with the bright glints of flowers, and beyond it the main house, rising with an imposing shadow against the blue curve of the sky, its sloping roof appearing impossibly sinister.

He thought about walking forward between the open gates that flanked the entranceway like guardian beasts, he thought of stepping onto that perfectly tended grass and wading through those annoyingly brilliant flowers, but Toph was still clutching his wrist, and her hand was clamped like an iron vice around his and he doubted he would be able to pull against her earth-solid stance. Instead, he simply stood, waiting, until Toph whispered "They're coming," and two dark silhouettes emerged from the shadow of the main house and made their way down across the gardens, followed closely behind by what appeared to a battalion of guards and every servant in the wide estate.

"I think we have to go in now," he whispered back when the silhouettes had grown close enough to dissolve into the vaguely familiar forms of Lord and Lady Beifong. Toph didn't answer; instead, she simply started walking forward, so quickly and so forcefully that for a few steps Sokka was almost dragged in her wake by the hand she still clutched in hers. As her parents and their retinue grew closer, though, Toph released his hand, and he found himself free but almost running to keep up with her unexpectedly powerful stride. She stomped each foot into the ground as she walked, as though making sure the earth was still solid and firm enough to support her weight; by the time they had grown close enough to see the patterns of embroidery on Lady Beifong's robe, cracks splayed out into the ground and pebbles shook around Toph's feet with every step.

Then, quite without warning and so quickly that Sokka barely avoided running into Toph's back, they stopped.

A vast silence welled up between them, standing arrayed only a few feet apart like enemy armies that will in a moment be engulfed in battle; Lord and Lady Beifong, their hands tucked into their sleeves, standing side-by-side with twin unreadable expressions, and behind them their guards and servants and retainers, staring down at Toph and Sokka, who was beginning to feel quite exposed and unprotected with the hot sun beating down on the back of his neck and Greatest Earthbender of All Time stiff and unmoving beside him.

A moment passed, stretching on into an eternity without measurement, without end; Sokka was consciously aware of, somewhere in the distance, birds chirping, children laughing, and men going about their work, but the silence and stillness that rushed like a dark river between parents and child was so wide and so loud that it eclipsed them all. The Earth Kingdom had disappeared, the town of Gaoling was gone, far-off Omashu and hope of salvation were but distant dreams. This was the sort of silence in which peace treaties are concluded and throats are cut.

Hesitantly, with the easy movements of a lord born and raised with power but the conscious and obvious restraint of a man who knows he has been shamed and is humbled by the knowledge, Lao Beifong took the two steps across the grassy sward and embraced his daughter.

Toph looked absurdly small, standing stiff and impassive amid the folds of her father's robe, rigid in his enveloping embrace. Not even a minute passed before Lady Beifong let out a wail and rushed forward, nearly shoving her husband out of the way in her haste to hug her long-lost child, half-sobbing into her shoulder. It seemed that not even Toph could withstand such an onslaught of emotion; Sokka could see her relax, could see some of the coiled-tight breaking-point tension flowing out of her, saw her unnatural stiffness ease. "Hello, Mother," she said softly, her voice low and guarded, straining to remain rock-hard and solid, steel fighting not to dissolve into light.

Lord Beifong raised a hand, and the soldiers and servants were gone, vanished like wisps of mist in the afternoon sun; suddenly and unaccountably they were alone in the wide gardens, and the silence was no longer dark and vast but small and tarnished, close and thick.

"Oh, Toph, you've grown!" Lady Beifong sighed, apparently unaware that her daughter was fighting her embrace, gently trying to pull away and failing miserably. "We've missed you so much, your father and I; oh, all these years you've been gone, we were so worried, our darling little daughter out in the world, we were so afraid you were in danger, or lost, or alone –"

"Mother," Toph grunted, finally managing to wriggle free of her mother's grip and taking a stumbling step backward to stand at Sokka's side, "Mother, Father, I'd like you to meet my friend Sokka. I think you remember him from when the Avatar visited –" the words hung unsaid like an insidious mist in the air, _when I left_, but Toph simply kept talking, glossing over them as if they did not exist. "I've been traveling with him for a long time, and I asked him to come with me. He will be staying as long as I do." It fell short of an order or a command, but Toph's voice was firm; Sokka straightened, resisting the urge to salute, as Lord Beifong's appraising gaze roamed over him, judging whether or not he was fit to be the companion of one of the noblest heiresses of the Earth Kingdom.

Apparently he possessed whatever mysterious qualities were needed to associate with Toph, for the lord made no comment, only inclined his head in a gesture of acknowledgement and raised his hand again. Sokka almost jumped as a maid materialized at Toph's side, out of nowhere, as though coalescing out of the very air.

"We are so very glad to have you home, Toph," he said kindly, too kindly; Sokka almost winced at the condescension, the sickening sugar-sweetness in his tone, and he could see Toph's spine stiffen as though insulted. With a sudden flash of insight, Sokka understood the horror Toph felt for this place; to have that constant cushioning confinement addressed to her as an undertone to every sentence, to have words wrap around her as chains and then pulled tight, woven into a net of pretty sentiments and children's storybooks, to have that soft erosion grating against the jagged stone at her core… it was no wonder, he thought grimly, that she despaired of ever seeing the outside again.

Watching Toph standing stiff again, hands clenched loosely into fists at her sides, blank eyes fixed on the ground before her, he though that if he had tried to speak to her in that tone, with that great care and that child-wary gentleness, he would have earned himself nothing more than a fistful of dirt in his mouth and a boulder to the head.

"You must be tired from your journey, Toph," Lord Beifong half-murmured, as though afraid that enunciating the words too clearly might give them sharp edges that would slice into his daughter's fragile skin. "Your maid will take you to your room; you should rest, and I'm sure your mother would be pleased if you would change into some proper clothes."

"Father," Toph growled with a warning in her voice, almost too low to hear; she did not raise her head, her blank milky eyes stayed riveted on the waving grass, but Sokka's battle-ready senses (he remembered the crack of a twig in the dead of night, the clank of a Fire Nation soldier approaching through the undergrowth, the airy rushing sound of fire igniting) detected the distinctive sound of pebbles clacking, rock crumbling. He glanced down, only to see a spiderweb of hair-thin cracks splaying out from under Toph's feet. The maid moved forward to take her lady's arm, to show the poor blind mistress the way through the winding house and wide gardens; Toph growled and jerked away from the woman's gentle grip, slamming both fists together and twisting them with a vicious jerk. The ground shifted under the maid's feet, the soil twisting away in a sharp curve; the woman shrieked and fell, catching herself on her hands as Toph stalked away towards the main house, leaving a trail of jagged rock stalagmites that erupted out of the ground behind her with every step.

Sokka was left standing without allies and growing rather nervous, as Lao Beifong stared morosely after his daughter and his wife stood beside him, head bowed, looking as though she was about to weep. Lord Beifong sighed, and turned back to face the strange young man his daughter had dragged home; Sokka bristled, prepared to defend himself and Toph, remembering the horrible stories he'd heard of this man's arrogance, his idiocy, his pompousness. He was prepared to refute accusations of Toph's weakness and his own unworthiness, he was ready to counter the words _Water Tribe peasant _that he could almost see forming on Lord Beifong's lips. In fact, he was ready for almost anything (except, of course, what he actually heard).

"It seems that I have misjudged my own daughter," Lord Beifong sighed, casting one last mournful glance to the rows of rock teeth disfiguring his beautiful gardens, that had razed his carefully arranged flowerbeds and uprooted an unfortunate tree which had been in Toph's path. "It seems," the lord announced, turning back to Sokka, "That either she has grown a great deal stronger in her absence or, as is more likely, I have grown wiser. You have traveled with my daughter since she left, haven't you?" This was addressed to Sokka directly; unsure of the proper level of respect due to such an obviously wealthy man, he merely inclined his head, remembering that he was, after all, a close friend of the Avatar. Apparently that small confirmation was all that was needed, for Lord Beifong nodded in return.

"Young man – Sokka, my daughter called you – I wish to ask you a favor," the lord continued gravely. "It has been brought to my attention that my daughter left of her own free will. This is disturbing to me, for I had never thought that she had been unhappy." He paused for a moment, scowling, as though recalling some particularly painful moment from the past; then, recovering himself, he shook his head and continued speaking. "I do not wish to commit the same mistake again," he intoned, his voice growing solemn, taking on an element of steel that Sokka recognized with a grin he could not bite back; it was the same tone Toph used as a last-ditch effort to avoid having to tear the earth from under someone's feet.

"We would greatly appreciate it, Sokka, if you would – ah – help us to learn about our daughter," Lady Beifong interjected, placing a hand on her husband's arm. "We wish to hear of the time she spent away from us. You see, we have heard the most dreadful stories from Omashu and Ba Sing Se, about battles and armies – the Earth King himself came to visit us, and told us Toph was in the middle of the war! We have been terrified, as you can imagine, and we wish you to tell us the truth, none of these dreadful lies. We wish you to tell us what will make her happy, keep her from doing something so stupid as leaving again!"

Sokka simply stared, wondering numbly exactly how to deal with these people who were so obviously delusional and out of their minds. Lord Beifong apparently did not notice that his young visitor's jaw was hanging open, for he simply nodded, confirming his wife's sentiments. He added, "We wish to know how to – how to handle her, now that she is back with us again, and when she will visit us in the future."

Sokka was silent for a moment, processing this. "I would be honored to help you, lord and lady," he said carefully, placing the utmost caution into every word. "First, may I point out that she doesn't need handling at all?"

This was met with silence. Lord Beifong seemed to be considering; he blinked, then shrugged, and swept his hand out in a gesture that indicated the main house. "Please, young Sokka, come into my study," he said courteously, and stood waiting, hands tucked into his sleeves, for some sign of acceptance or acknowledgement.

"Sure," Sokka sighed, giving up on formalities (they made his jaw ache with the effort of restraining the words he wished to say, not to mention the ache in his brain). "Do you, your lordship sir, by any chance have a not-centuries-out-of-date map?"

* * *

The moon rose wide and full, lifting above the mountains that surrounded the town of Gaoling like a pearl rising on the currents of the ocean that swirled, invisible, thick and dark. It seemed to drain all of the light from the land as it arched towards the heavens, leaving beneath it only varying textures of shadow, deepening the hills and valleys into darkness, casting its brilliant radiance down as though for the express purpose of creating contrast. The beams of its cold light splayed out across the land, creeping between trees and under doors, over roofs and through windows, though wherever it landed it seemed only to deepen the ambient shadows instead of dispelling them.

Sokka was standing in Lord Beifong's study with his back to the only wide window, so he could not see the advent of the moon, but he felt it rising with a small, cold sense inside of him that suddenly vibrated like a struck chord and fell silent, more silent than before. He imagined that he could feel the cold soft kiss of the silver light against the back of his neck, as he always imagined, and he paused for a moment in his restless pacing around the room, lapsing into silence to focus on the stirring in his soul that occurred every night at moonrise and, insofar as he believed anything not visible and tangible, amounted to a prayer.

A sudden stillness overtook him, and he stood immobile for a few moments, feeling the habitual darkness inside of him swirl and surge, as it did every night, with a sort of sweet half-remembered ache that he cherished every evening as the stars faded before the moon's blank white gaze. He resisted the urge to turn and look through the wide window; he knew that the moonlight would paint a glimmer of ivory on the windowsill as it sought entrance, but the warm golden glow of the candles that stood around the room would keep it at bay, melting it to only a few thin strands of liquid silver that would not penetrate the warm wood-gold darkness of the room.

Lord and Lady Beifong did not seem to mind that he had stopped speaking, that he had been momentarily distracted by the moon and its ancient whisper of lost loves. Lady Beifong had collapsed into a chair propped up against the wall, and now sat with her head buried in her hands, in a most unladylike position of bewildered despair; Lao Beifong remained on his feet, standing across the study's dark width, both hands flat on the table that separated him from his young guest, as though he was using its wooden girth for support. Spread out on that table, illuminated in great detail by the moonlight and candles, was a map of the world, with place names scrawled in a neat scholar's hand, major cities accompanied by small etchings and drawings, nations marked with their respective symbols. Overtop of the careful lettering and precise lines, a thick black smear of charcoal dragged a messy streak back and forth across oceans, between cities, over the borders of nations and across vast spaces of wilderness.

Sokka tapped the charcoal stick in his hand against his chin, once, stirring himself from the vague, wispy recollections brought on by the moon. He turned his gaze instead to Lord Beifong's face, which had gone utterly blank as he stared at the map, apparently dumbstruck, his eyes flickering back and forth, following the erratic zigzag of the charcoal line. "Is that all?" he asked, and his voice was odd, deep and hoarse but at the same time curiously thin, as though stretched the point of its endurance and ready at any moment to snap.

Sokka considered taking pity on his hosts, but then he thought of blank white eyes so much like the unfeeling gaze of the moon, and shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said flatly, and the man and woman before him winced, as though he had dealt them a blow. "That only takes us to the middle of summer. The fighting lasted until the end." He took a step closer to the table and tapped the charcoal stick on a small etching of tree in the middle of a vast empty plain, leaving a dark blot on the fine parchment of the map. "There's a forest here, near what used to be Omashu. We camped there for the night, and were ambushed by a Fire Nation patrol." New memories seeped into his brain, smoke and screams and the clank of metal and the roar of crumbling rock. He remembered the small dark enclosed space underneath the trees, he remembered bewildering flares of light and shadow, movement and depth, he remembered a wild war cry and the earth shaking under his feet. "Aang, Katara and I were asleep," he said aloud, staring at the small spot on the map, watching his memories play out on the parchment as though looking through the fine weave into the very fabric of the past. "Toph heard them coming, and even she had only a second's warning, just enough time to put up a wall of sorts to protect us. It wasn't much, but if it hadn't been for her we all probably would have been murdered in our sleep." He dragged the charcoal stick out away from the borders of the Earth Kingdom, and smeared another blot of darkness in the middle of the ocean.

"Here," he said absently, "We were attacked by two Fire Nation ships. Aang leaped off to fight them, but he couldn't get too close because of bowmen on deck firing arrows. Appa was panicking, they were shooting fireballs and missiles at us; we couldn't outrun them, we couldn't fight, and it was only a matter of time until Appa was seriously injured, or killed." He paused for a moment, glancing up at the pair across the table from him, who only stared back, silent and pale. "Toph was completely blind," he said bluntly, watching for a reaction; neither one stirred. Satisfied, he glanced down and continued. "She had no earth, no rock, no anything; I still remember she was clutching the saddle for dear life, which she tends to do when she's on Appa. We were desperate and scared, panicking even though we had all of our weapons and all of our abilities, and then Toph just stood up and leaned out over Appa's side, letting go of the saddle, reaching out for something, even though there was nothing there. She almost fell off into the water, but just then Appa curved in towards one of the ships, and she was actually able to bend the metal it was made out of." Sokka raised his head again, locking his gaze on Lord Beifong's eyes, speaking each word clearly, firmly, like a blow. "She sunk two fully manned, fully armed Fire Nation ships," he said flatly, watching as the man blanched at the thought. "Completely blind, without so much as a grain of sand to bend, she sunk two ships that a Water Tribe fleet probably couldn't have defeated. She saved our lives. She saved our lives thousands of times."

Sokka fell silent, listening to the imagined whisper of the moon at his back and the real hiss of the guttering candles all around, waiting for either of Toph's parents to make a sound, form a word, some sign of comprehension or acknowledgement. It seemed that spending so many hours locked in the study with the stories of the Blind Bandit had drained them of all strength, as though they had faced Toph's dangers themselves, all in the space of a single afternoon. Lord Beifong had assumed a stony mask that might have been shock or sullenness, while Sokka thought with some bemusement that Lady Beifong looked as though she was going to faint.

Finally Lao Beifong managed to incline his head in a gesture of acknowledgement, which Sokka took as permission to continue. The charcoal skated across the ocean, coming to rest on a small island which formed the tip of a large archipelago. "Here we were attacked by what amounted to a full regiment," he said simply, tapping the stick against the map for emphasis. "We were almost overwhelmed. They even had Aang in chains at one point; they snared him while he was trying to fly to help my sister Katara, who was facing three Firebenders at once. Toph snapped the metal of the shackles they were using to keep Aang from Airbending, and buried the soldiers who had tried to capture him; she shoved the ground up from under the general's ostrich-horse and cemented him into the ground, leaving the troops without a leader. Then she followed us back to where they were attacking Appa, pulling up small mountains to shield us from being caught from behind." His voice was steady, but inside his head was chaos of burning air and screeching metal, the crack of stone and the crunch of bone. He remembered the fight under the sky turned bloody red and then dark with smoke, he remembered the frantic pounding of blood and the gritting of teeth, the desperate animal fear and the sight of Toph, covered in dirt and blood, smashing her way through the swarming enemies to save her friends.

"Your daughter saved the Avatar, and by doing that she probably saved the world," Sokka continued, not even bothering to look up this time. "She was wounded in that fight," he added, with a sort of calm that was ruthless in its lack of emotion; a part of him that still ached with the scars of old battles was glad to hear Lady Beifong gasp in shock, was glad to hear her husband thump his fist on the table in feeble protest. It was good that they realize the horror their daughter had survived, good that they experience some of the sick fear and the nauseous dread that had overtaken him when, collapsed in a dark forest, gasping for breath, he had found out that some of the blood staining Toph's skin was her own. Let them feel a taste, a fraction of that terrible fear, and they would realize how fierce and brave and strong their daughter was, how magnificent and proud she had been, sitting still and silent with her blank gaze staring out into the darkness, biting her lip and refusing whimper as he stitched up a wound that would have reduced grown men to tears. Sokka did not describe to Lord and Lady Beifong that night, that blood, that pride; they would not have understood. He could not even put it into words, he could not find the syllables to give it justice, that fierce feral strength that made Toph who she was, that made her so desperately unsuited to places like this, with the delicate scent of flowers wafting the in window and birds warbling from trees that grew inside the safety of the walls.

Something was stirring in Sokka, something angry, something vindictive with fangs and claws that took a vicious pleasure in the Beifongs' obvious distress. Sokka found himself wanting to continue the tale, wanting to describe in the burning and bloodstained details every battle, every ambush, every deserted town and sleepless night; he wanted to take revenge for Toph and for himself, he wanted to make these people suffer because they had caused Toph so much misery, he wanted them to know in intimate clarity every battle won, every mountain moved, every life saved by the heroic warrior they had never believed in.

He wanted these things, but he had lived through the worst war the world had ever known; he had seen Fire Nation prisoners, and knew the look in a man's eyes when he has endured just about all that he can endure. He recognized the confusion and the desperation that shimmered behind Lord Beifong's stony mask; it was a much dimmer, much duller version of the shock that takes young soldiers when they see the battlefield and find it is nothing like the pleasant euphemistic truth they had been lead to believe.

Sokka was not cruel. He dropped the charcoal stick on the table, letting it roll away to fetch up against where the parchment of the map curled up at the Southern Water Tribe, noting with a sort of detached interest that it left a wide smear of oily blackness in its wake, wiping out nations and towns with effortless ease.

Toph's parents still had not moved. Sokka did not rouse them from their shock; he was not cruel. Instead, he offered them a slight bow which he knew they would not even perceive, let alone acknowledge, and walked slowly and firmly towards the study door, stepping around Lord Beifong where the man stood leaning on the table, staring hard into nothingness, obviously thinking hard.

Sokka paused with his hand on the doorknob, casting one glance back at the warm golden room and dark shadowed country beyond. "Toph is a hero," he said loudly, unsure of whether he would be hard or not, but knowing the words needed to be said. "Toph is a warrior. She is the single strongest, bravest person I have ever met. You should be proud of her for that."

The words fell flat in the silent room, and Sokka turned away, swung the door open and stepped out into the unexpected darkness of the hallway. The door clicked shut behind him, and he slumped against it for a moment, feeling unexpectedly drained; the wish for revenge was gone, the surge and clash of memories had vanished, and he found himself filled with a cold sort of emptiness, like a fire collapsing into ashes, that always overcame him after talking about the war.

The hallway was shadowed and thick with darkness, but only a short way along the corridor there was a sliding screen which some servant had left open, allowing a pool of moonlight to gather on the wooden planks of the floor like a solidified cloud; the silvery glint of brightness caught Sokka's eye, and he straightened up, striding eagerly down the hall towards that light, finding himself longing to breathe the open air. His mouth tasted like smoke and blood; there was a curious part of him, buried down deep and barely heard, that wished for it to taste like dust and dirt (which he associated with safety and friendship and home).

The night breeze splashed against his face as he gained the open door, stepping out into the moonlit gardens as though plunging into a cool waterfall; he stood for a moment, rapt, letting the moonlight wash over him, feeling its gaze (blank and milky white) heavy on his shoulders. He closed his eyes for a moment, and errant, unconnected thoughts flitted through his mind without really forming anything definite (darkness, lack-of-sight, eyes closed, dead, blank white dead and the moon up in the sky and the earth beneath his feet).

"Thank you."

The voice was close and sudden; Sokka jumped, startled, but did not open his eyes, preferring instead to listen in the darkness of his own head, listen to the tones which somehow seemed more textured and rough and real without the images to interfere with them. The words were gentle, but the voice that spoke them was rough, gravelly, though perhaps less so than usual. In fact, it seemed almost… subdued.

"For what?" he asked without needing to turn around (there was a sudden rush of pleasure and warmth from the bottom of his soul and the last shrouds of memory were chased away). "I didn't do anything."

He was primed, listening, straining, and when the voice returned it burst into his consciousness, tough and sweet, like a rock split to reveal a glittering crystal concealed within. "Yes, you did," it said simply. "You told them… well, everything. They needed to hear it, but they never would have believed me; in fact, I probably would have ended up throwing rocks at them both just to get their attention. They would never pay attention to the weak little blind girl that they think I am. But hearing it from you… well, that might make a difference. They don't know you. They haven't had time to judge you yet."

The tone of the words had turned sour, bitter, and Sokka found himself scowling along with it, wishing irrelevantly for the pain buried just beneath the sound to go away, to vanish as the painful memories had. Irritated, he opened his eyes – and momentarily forgot to breathe.

There, lounging against the wall of house before him, was Toph. At least, the girl looked a great deal like Toph; she had the same face, the same small frame, the same rough hands and empty eyes. But she had undergone a transformation, a metamorphosis, and for a few moments Sokka found himself gaping, gasping for breath, mind blasted clean of all thought, all memory, all sensation except for the sight before him which expanded to fill his entire universe.

Toph was _beautiful_.

She was slumped nonchalantly against the wooden wall, with the careless slouch of the Blind Bandit, but the champion Earthbender's tattered tunic and breeches were gone. In their place was a glittering, shimmering white silk dress which draped around Toph's shoulders as though crafted specifically for her, falling over her arms in waterfalls and swirls of white and gold, shimmering in folds of cloth into a gold hemline just above her ankles (her feet were still bare, and Sokka was glad for that, at least). The fabric of the dress seemed to catch the moonlight and shatter it, reflect it back in a thousand summer-star glints, as though the cloth had been woven from spun glass. Toph's hair had been twisted back into a bun again, but this time it was held in place by golden pins that gleamed and glinted with a light of their own among the glossy black; her bangs still dangled down in front of her useless eyes, and the vague metaphor that had been lurking at the back of Sokka's consciousness all night suddenly coalesced and hit him with the force of a boulder in the stomach. He felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him and he should have been gasping for breath; he realized that Toph's eyes, Toph's blank dead useless eyes, stared at him with the same luminescent whiteness as the moon.

She was speaking, and it took a monumental effort to focus on the words, to tear his eyes away from the otherworldly apparition (from the spirit world, surely), that had appeared in front of him and focus only on her voice. "This is Mother's idea of proper clothes," she was grumbling, and suddenly Sokka realized just why she looked so beautiful, glowing in the moonlight, against the shadow of the land; it wasn't the dress alone, wasn't the gleaming glow of wealth or the trappings of nobility that hung about her like a cloak. It was the fact that the dress hid a stance that could be shifted into an attack at any moment, it was the fact that the golden pins held up her hair so that it wouldn't get in the way in a fight, it was the fact that even while glittering and glowing and reflecting light, Toph managed to look rough around the edges and strong and jagged as only she could. His mind, eclipsed by starbursts and supernovas, groped for a metaphor, struggling with the concepts of beauty and danger, ethereality and strength.

_Like a crystal dagger,_ he thought numbly, unaware that the silence had gone on too long and Toph was beginning to scowl, her brow furrowing over her useless eyes. _Like a moonflower_. He felt the sharp sting of an aptly thrown pebble bouncing off his shoulder, and added _with thorns_.

"What's your problem, Snoozles?" Toph asked sharply, sounding, not angry or annoyed as he would have expected, but almost defensive. "Why is your heart pounding like that? What're you looking at?"

There was no graceful answer, no easy way to sidestep the interrogation and escape Toph's potential wrath. Sokka decided he didn't want one. "You," he answered simply.

There was a moment of silence; at first Toph's frown slanted sharply down into a bitter scowl, then as he watched her expression lightened, faded into something close to uncertainty, then finally settled on annoyance. She bit her lip, fixing him with a rather halfhearted glare. "Don't say it," she growled warningly, her hands clenching into fists. "Don't say a word. I didn't want to wear this stupid dress, my mother forced it on me, it's the only way to keep her from having a fit and I just don't want to deal with that just yet, I needed to find some way to keep her off my back –"

"You look beautiful," Sokka said blankly, completely nonplussed by her tirade. He watched, only barely beginning to recover from his initial shock, as a blush crept up Toph's cheeks, staining her porcelain skin.

"You're going to die for that," Toph tried to growl, but it fell short and came out as something closer to a halfhearted murmur. She was uncertain, Sokka realized suddenly, with a jolt like a lightning strike. She was out of her depth with appearances and finery, unsure of what to do, what to believe, what to feel; she was more disconcerted now, he could sense it in her stance, than she had ever been riding through the open sky on the back of a ten-ton flying bison.

Something inside of him stirred at that thought, something that twanged uncomfortably close to his heart, something that wanted to chase the uncertainty away and see her standing tall and firm with the confidence that came from good solid stone under her feet. Before he had a chance to muster up his thoughts, though, let alone speak, Toph jerked her eyes up from where her gaze had been resting on the ground; she cocked her head to one side, as though listening to some faraway sound, and then her uncertain scowl dissolved into the wicked grin that he recognized (and dreaded) from years of pranks and traps and fiendish plots.

He opened his mouth to ask what she was planning, but before he could manage it she bridged the distance between them in two swift steps, reached out and grabbed his collar, and pulled his head down, crashing her lips against his.

It was like being slammed against a wall, it was like a punch in the head, there was a quick flash of light and dazzling patterns behind his eyes and something in his chest that was almost like pain, but was far too sweet and electrifying and by the time he managed to right himself from the sudden wave of dizziness it was over, Toph had released him and was backing away, still with that wolfish grin fixed in place, her blank eyes fixed over his shoulder. Sokka found that all of strength had drained away, leaving him almost trembling, and he could only move his lips to form meaningless sounds, his brain had been derailed and was only slowly clearing of the explosions that had taken place behind his eyes. There were sounds coming from behind him, but there were sounds coming from all around and he was sure that at least half of them weren't real; only Toph was real, standing there grinning at him, her hands tucked into her sleeves as though nothing was out of the ordinary at all.

Finally he managed to regain his breath to the point where he could begin to form words again, pitiful though they were. "W-What – why –"

"My father's standing behind you," Toph answered cheerfully, still grinning. "And I figured that as long as you're in trouble, they'll leave me alone, and I won't have to put up with these stupid dresses any more."

Then she was gone, seemingly swallowed by the earth, and only her bright laughter still echoed in the air, pealing out like the very sounds of the stars and moon in the dark wide shadows of night. And as Sokka turned to face the red face of the man who a moment ago had been the image of lordly composure, as he stood numb and blank while the shouts echoed in his ears, he thought about acts of bravery. He thought about the smears of charcoal on the map, he thought about the dark memories full of pain and smoke, he thought about the kiss like an avalanche, and though his thoughts were muddled and wordless, he thought perhaps that the last one eclipsed the others, and that he preferred it that way.

As he was dragged into the house by various angry servants, verbally flayed by threats of escalating intensity, and thrown into a dark cold room with the promise of being a prisoner for a long time to come, he found that he no longer particularly cared. His mouth tasted of dirt, and he fell asleep dreaming of thorned moonflowers and mountains leaping up to challenge the sky.

* * *

The End! Sorry for the sucky ending, and I hope it wasn't too random. Review, please! 


	12. Vision

To quote the inestimable Monty Python:

...and now, for something completely different.

I must express my eternal gratitude for the outpouring of wonderfulness that followed last chapter. That having been said, I've been under tremendous pressure this past week or two to come up with something equally pleasing to my lovely readers. Unfortunately, that pressure but a damper on my willingness to write, and I only just managed to snap myself out of it. I've taken the time-honored tack of completely switching directions. This one isn't Tokka at all; having just remembered that there are other characters on the show besides Toph and Sokka, I asked myself, how would Toph react to Zuko? And I answered myself, she'd have a hell of a good time torturing him. And then that idea became this.

Oh, for all of those who asked for and commented on a follow-up to 'Home', never fear. I'm going to write an independent multichap fic that will elaborate and expand on 'Home', and deal with the events therein and their repercussions. So just have patience, my friends!

But more on that later. For now, thanks as always to Artemis Rae for the lovely new Escapade, which with the others is an eternal source of inspiration, and thanks to all of my lovely reviewers, of past and future. For now, enjoy!

* * *

The day had been a quiet one, and as they touched down in a forest clearing and set about making camp, the night promised to follow much the same. The conversation was muted and soft, rolling underneath the great vast silence like the soft rushing of a river in the distance; it was calm, without an element of fear, but wary. New ground was being tested, new minds probed for threats or pressure points, and the usual boisterous joking and camaraderie that often took up the time between battles was muted, cautious, hesitant. Two new silhouettes moved in the shadow of the great bison that night, and everyone, those two included, understood that some time was needed to adapt to their presence, and some adjustments would need to be made. 

The Avatar and his friends were nothing if not adaptable, though, and in less than an hour the conversation had risen to the level of acquaintances, then friends, and then it was punctuated by bright flashing laughter loud enough to have reached the point where it no longer simply defined the night's silence. Even Appa, perhaps a bit more worn out than usual from having carried six instead of four, seemed to be contented now as he collapsed like a crumbling mountain onto the ground and lay there, snoring.

A burst of startled laughter followed the bison's earth-shaking snores; Aang flicked a playful gust of wind to ruffle the fur on Appa's broad head, while Sokka and the Fire Nation's greatest (retired) general chuckled and Katara scolded them in loud, hollow words that slid off of them like rain. Sokka brushed away her remonstrance with a wave of his boomerang, a flick of his wrist; he said something snarky and sarcastic to Iroh, who replied in kind, tucking his hands into his wide sleeves and grinning. An argument quickly ensued, as Katara's instructions grew in pitch and volume, and Sokka's answers remained insolent and amused; by the time Aang thought to intervene, Katara had pulled out her water pouch, and the night air was split by shrieks of laughter and splashes and cries.

Toph retreated to the other side of the clearing, ducking hastily out of the way as Sokka barreled past her, shouting about the unfairness of benders in general and his sister in particular; grinning, Toph dodged out of his way and scrambled up the gentle slope that bordered one side of their makeshift campsite, rising above the projectiles and threats, letting the vibrations echo up through the soles of her feet as she gained the small hill's summit. There she was free to sit with her knees pulled up to her chest, safely separated from the fray, head tilted to one side as she listened, trying to sort through the muddled haze of vibrations and shouts and splashes and roars. A heavy jolt echoed up through the earth (that would be Sokka hitting the ground), and Katara was shrieking with laughter; then there was the soft _whoosh_ of igniting air, Katara's shriek of laughter turned into a yelp of surprise, then the laughter burst out again, this time with a new voice chiming in, rough and low, as the Dragon of the West joined in the bending-fight like the overgrown child he was.

Toph, biting back laughter herself, sat with her blank gaze fixed down below as though blindness was no obstacle to sight, studying the footsteps and thrown supplies and leaps and jumps that shivered up through the hillside into the soles of her feet. Her sharp sense of hearing, though filled with the laughter and shouted insults of her friends, easily detected another sound, a clank of metal and rustle of cloth; over the vibrations that were muffled by the layers of soil and rock between where she sat and the bottom of the hill, she felt a much clearer, sharper series of taps, footsteps, close and drawing closer.

She didn't look up, of course. There wouldn't have been a point to it, but it would have shown that she acknowledged the approach of the other person, and she would much rather annoy him by acting completely indifferent to his existence. It would be much more fun that way.

Sure enough, Toph thought she could detect a surly, heavy quality to the footsteps as they drew closer still, finally coming to a halt right beside her; she studied the shape of Fire Prince Zuko against the ground, listened to his small clankings and clatterings as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, shuffling his boots against the ground, moving restlessly, unsettled. Toph allowed herself a small smile, still without lifting her blank gaze from the campsite below. He was so uprooted, worse than Twinkletoes; it would have been less than a thought to slip the soil out from under his feet, his stance was so unsteady.

Apparently, Zuko wasn't very talkative. He only stood there, unsteadily, and Toph guessed he was looking down at his uncle and would-be friends; she couldn't be sure, but she guessed from the tension in his muscles and the irregularities in his breathing that he was scowling, growling, _angry_.

She could not keep herself from smirking. Was this going to be _fun_!

Toph feigned a wide yawn and flopped backwards, stretching herself out on her back in the prickling grass, sinking into the curve of the hillside that pressed against her back, her shoulders, her hips. "You know, your uncle has an amazing stance," she commented. "You should get him to teach you. You're about as steady as a skittish ostrich-horse."

There was a long moment of silence, which might have been poignant or pointedly sullen if Toph hadn't started whistling to fill its yawning void. She could feel Zuko tense even further. "My uncle is a bumbling fool," he snapped, a delightful edge of agitation in his voice. There were wounds there, Toph could tell; low and deep, simmering and sullen, there were depths of resentment underneath those words that stung at the edges of Zuko's voice, rippled through his body into the earth beneath. The message was clear; _I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to talk to _you.

"If he is, then he's a bumbling fool who makes really great tea," Toph commented, raising her voice a bit to drown out the sullen angsty silence that Zuko was trying so hard to generate. She clenched one fist into the ground, compacting the soil into a small rock, which she tossed up into the air and caught again, effortlessly. "Whereas all _you_ seem to be able to do, Angry Jerk, is stomp around on hillsides and pout."

Toph could almost _hear_ Zuko raising his eyebrow; his incredulity was tangible. "_Angry Jerk_?" he spluttered – yes, Toph noted with delight, spluttered – and she felt the tension drain out of him, the deliberate clenched-tight energy of anger replaced by the dumb natural rigidity of shock. "Angry Jerk?" he repeated, as though unable to believe what he had heard, as though saying it again would make it comprehensible. Toph shrugged, enjoying the way her shoulders pressed against the earth.

"Ordinarily I would pick my own nickname for you," she said by way of explanation, "but I just can't outdo Sokka's. Even a genius like me knows when to step aside and admit defeat."

The sullen silence came again, but the quality of it was different this time; the simmering, brooding heat of a wounded prince was gone, and in its place was the flat, incredulous disbelief of an offended cat. Toph smirked, tossing her rock into the air again and letting it clack back down into her palm.

"…Angry Jerk." Zuko's voice was emotionless and flat, and his restless movements had stilled. "You're going to call me Angry Jerk from now on?"

"Yup," Toph answered brightly. "At least, until I come up with something better. Got a problem with that?"

There was another pause as Zuko considered this. Then, after a few moments, "… if I did, would you care?"

"Not in the least." Toph stretched, using the movement to check the vibrations in the hillside underneath her; she felt down with her senses of earth-sight into the campsite at the hill's base, where the bending-fight seem to have calmed down, and she could feel the small depression in the earth that probably meant a campfire. Judging from the way Zuko's silhouette felt against the ground below him, she guessed he was peering downwards too; he was starting to tense up again, starting to sulk. Toph flicked the pebble in her hand at him, grinning widely as she felt him wince, curse, and grab his arm where the missile had impacted. "What're you looking at, Angry Jerk?"

"The sunset." Toph thought that perhaps Zuko was a bit slow; he answered her question without so much as a hint of malice, then was silent for a moment (she imagined that she could actually hear the gears grinding in his skull) before it occurred to him to say, rather venomously, "Too bad _you _can't see it."

_Good job, Fire-boy, _Toph thought to herself, grinning widely in hopes that he would see it. _You've managed to come up with a rather insulting insult. Too bad _I'm _the Earth Rumble Champion with a skin as tough as rock, and you're… well… you._

What was it Katara had said? That Zuko was hurting, that he'd suffered a lot in his life, that he probably needed some personal space and respect if he was going to keep from becoming a backstabbing bastard again. She'd said not to insult him, not to bait him; she'd said that her brother and one of her dearest friends, who she'd been inconsiderate enough to mention by name, weren't even supposed to go near him.

Katara said he was wounded and insecure, and should be coddled. Toph thought that he was spoiled and sulking, and should be pounded with common sense until he snapped the hell out of it.

Obviously, Katara and those other fools down in the valley wouldn't be any help in what Toph was already silently dubbing Zuko's rehabilitation. Obviously, Toph would have to do it herself.

That, she thought with a wicked wolfish grin, was quite all right. She would be more than happy to do whatever she could to help her dear friend Zuko…

"Oh, I don't think it's so bad, not being able to see it," she said brightly, hitting the perfect pitch of obnoxious optimism designed to grate on Zuko's nerves (at least, it certainly grated on Sokka's). "I mean, I don't think I should be complaining. I'm much better off than so many poor saps that are _really _blind… you, for example."

"_What_?" The shout was outraged, as she'd known it would be (what was it about boys and fears of inadequacy?), but almost immediately the outrage subsided into a quite, icy, shimmering knife-edged scorn. "What are you babbling about, peasant? You're _blind_. I'm not. You can't see _anything_!"

"Zuko, Zuko…" He was tensing up again, getting angry. Toph thought brightly that it least it was an outward-focused anger; hadn't Katara said to try and distract him from brooding? Well, if he was busy hating her, he couldn't be hating himself, now could he? Of course not. She doubted he had the emotional capacity for that kind of multitasking. Still grinning, she held up a finger, halting the tirade that was sure to follow his incredulous pronouncement. "First of all," she declared, "I'm no peasant. You can use that crack on Meathead and Sugar Queen, if you happen to like being frozen to trees for extended periods of time. But me, I'm at least as noble as you are, if you're so concerned with pedigrees. Secondly," she held up a second finger, "I can see way more than you can. In fact, you're blinder than a buzzardbat, as far as I can tell. It's sad, really, how much you've never seen. You're so deprived." She clicked her tongue, making it a distinctly pitying sound, making sure to rearrange her features into a mask of compassion. "Poor little princey-poo," she sighed, and shook her head as though to express the profoundest of regrets. "There's no help for you, really…"

"Shut _up_!" Zuko bellowed, and Toph flinched instinctively as a rush of heat shot past her left ear, accompanied by the roar of heated air, the screech of tortured molecules. Her blank white eyes stung briefly and intensely; her nose and throat filled for a moment with the odor of thick, oily smoke. Then the smoke dissipated, blown away by the cool breeze of oncoming night; Toph could feel the superheated soil beside her, where Zuko's firebolt had impacted the earth, cooling off, and then the silence was dark and cold again and filled only by the heavy rush of the prince's breathing.

"Temper," Toph said mildly, pushing herself up on her elbows, deigning for the first time to fix her opaque gaze on where she guessed Zuko's face would be. "You really should get that anger under control. Couldn't you get your uncle –"

"Oh, will you shut up about my uncle!" His voice was still angry and brittle, but it wasn't quite as sharp as a moment before; some of the cutting edges had been smoothed away, and there was perhaps a faint tinge of regret to the words. Toph tilted her head as though listening as she remembered another one of Katara's long-winded lectures, another one of her euphemisms interspersed with threats. _He's not a bad person, he's really not. He isn't going to hurt us, no matter how aloof and powerful he tries to make us think he is._

The illusions of power, delusions of grandeur, were things Toph had plenty of experience with. She stayed quiet for a moment, allowing Zuko to gather himself, leash his formidable temper, and think up an appropriately cutting insult to use next. Then, after a few moments had passed; "_You're _the blind one. You can't see the sunset."

Toph allowed herself to flop back down onto her back, satisfied that the air around her was not going to spontaneously ignite again. "You can't even see as far as the campsite," she pointed out, and this was true; she could tell by the sudden knife-edge of cold in the air, the sudden cooling chill of the ground beneath her, that night had fallen. Zuko's vision should be severely limited; then she heard the sudden click as he snapped his fingers, and felt a small breath of warmth as he cupped a flame in his hands.

"Now I can," he said sulkingly, sneeringly, smugly. Toph started whistling again, waiting for him to fire the next volley; finally he managed, "You can't see the stars."

She tapped one fist against the ground. "You can't see the patterns in the webs of tree-roots. They're like a thousand interwoven spiderwebs. It's a shame you'll never know what it looks like."

The pity in her voice was deliberate, and it sparked his fury again, not entirely unexpectedly. "You've never seen the sun."

"You've never seen the earth; not all the way down, not down to where it takes on texture, where the layers rub against each other and there's diamonds and gold."

There was another beat of silence as Zuko thought furiously; Toph imagined the gears of his brain whirring again, this time clacking and sparking against each other in their haste. "You'll never see the huge palaces and castles, the greatest and most beautiful places in the world. You'll never see the ruins and ancient towers that have stood for centuries."

"You'll never see the roots of a mountain, its base that goes all the way down to the core of the planet. You'll never hear it sing with the weight of time. You'll never see the centuries piling up on it in layers of sandstone and shale." She grinned brightly up at him, sensing his frustration, forgetting he wouldn't be able to see the smile in the newly-fallen darkness. "Waxing rather poetic, aren't we? Who knew the banished warrior prince had such a soft artistic side?"

He growled again, but softly, and Toph heard him mutter under his breath, heard the words shiver down through his length and vibrate in the dirt. "I don't care about your breeding," he snarled softly to himself, "You _think _like a peasant."

"Ha! Yes!" Toph whooped, a joyous shout that echoed like a crack of thunder in the raw night silence and made Zuko jump, startled. "We have contact! Maybe you aren't as blind as I thought, Angry Jerk. That's one thing you've learned to see that you certainly couldn't see a year ago. And I thought I was the only one who could see that pedigrees don't matter. You're still blind to the most important thing of all, though. Know what it is?"

"Don't tell me," Zuko muttered, and the sullen sulking was back in his voice; Toph thought she could detect his feet pressing harder against the earth, his weight crashing more heavily down onto the ground as he slouched over, his pouting and sulking seeping into his physical posture as well as his words. "I bet it's the configurations of rock crystals or something. This is idiotic," he snarled, raising his voice a little, to the point where Toph could hear it in the air as well as the earth. "You're blind, and I'm not! I can see everything! What is it that you think _I'm _blind to?"

"Oh, nothing you'd care too much about, I'm sure," Toph snapped, and she felt Zuko flinch at the unexpected element of steel in her voice, shocking after the calm, cheerful taunts he'd grown accustomed to. Then Toph was on her feet, hands clenched into fists, brow furrowed into a scowl over her milky white eyes; startled by such sudden ferocity, Zuko took a staggered step backwards, but he wasn't quick enough. Toph stamped one foot against the ground hard, and a pillar of rock fountained up under her feet, thrusting her up into the air until she was head and shoulders above the Fire Prince; leaning forward, she reached out with unnerving accuracy and grabbed the collar of Zuko's tunic, yanking him up until his feet almost left the ground. "I may be blind," she growled into his face, while he just stared at her with wide eyes, too startled to react, "But you're a moron. Here you are stomping around in the woods, moping and groaning, while you have an uncle who's a great man and is upset because he wants you to be happy. You say I'm the blind one, but you can't see that you're hurting a man who never hurt you, and who doesn't deserve to be hurt, especially not by such a little twit. You say _I'm _the blind one, but you can't see that you have three people down there who would be your friends, who would be your family if you let them, and you're too busy being a whiney offended prince!"

Toph released Zuko's collar, letting him slide back to the ground in a shell-shocked heap; she stamped her foot again, and her pillar stump descended back into the hillside, leaving her to stand with her hands on her hips over where the once-mighty Fire Nation prince was crumpled, staring up with his jaw hanging open and his eyes wide. "Next time you feel the need to be a whiny, angry jerk," Toph snapped, though without the biting anger of a moment before, "Make sure you take a good hard look around and see who it is you're trying to get back at who it is that you'll actually be hurting." With that parting shot she turned and began stamping her way back down the hill, with Zuko's astounded gaze trailing her through the darkness; he stared, dumbfounded, at the small silhouette clad in fine green weave that almost glowed in the moonlight's gentle illumination. Perhaps she sensed his gaze on the back of her neck, for she stopped halfway down the slope, turned around, and flicked her hand up at him; he leaped to his feet, jolted out of his shock by the sting of pebbles flecking his shoulders and arms.

"Hey! Peasant!" he yelped, trying to smooth out all of the impact sites at once. "What the hell was that for?"

"Nothing," Toph called back, her voice sparkling and merry again. "That was just because I think you're obnoxious."

"Hey!" As Toph turned and slid down the rest of the hillside and into the circle of firelight, kicking up a wave of dust that made Katara yelp and Sokka laugh, Zuko bolted down the slope after her, pushing her tirade to the back of his mind. He didn't run down and take his place around the fire because Toph was right; he did it because the night was cold beyond the circle of wavering golden light and warm conversation. He didn't make an effort to temper his angry cynicism towards the Avatar and his friends because Toph had a point, or because she had convinced him; it was only because he reasoned that it would be stupid to make an enemy as powerful as the Avatar if he didn't have to. Overall, it wasn't because of Toph that he allowed his uncle to hug him like a son, later that night when the fire was banked and they all stretched out to sleep in the twilight gloom; that was because… well, because…

Toph stretched out beside Sokka's sleeping roll, pressing her hand down into the ground to form a small depression that would serve as her bed for the night, a wide smile on her face. If she concentrated hard enough, with one ear pressed to the earth, she could hear Zuko's vibrations, blended and blurred together with his uncle's as the prince allowed the old man to engulf him in a chortling embrace.

As she drifted off to sleep, she pondered the fact that everyone around her was blind; Zuko to the things around him that mattered most, and everyone else to the fact that Zuko was a whining moronic brat who needed some… help… to realize his potential.

Well, that was all right. Toph was used to being the only one who knew what was really going on. And if it meant more conversations like the one they'd had tonight, well… she wouldn't mind being the one to knock Zuko into shape.

In fact, she thought as that wicked wolfish grin gripped her face muscles again, it might be very, very fun.

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And that fulfills my Toph and Zuko mischief quota for the week. Back to school again, and hopefully to be inspired therein... in the meantime, do leave a thought or two, tell me what you liked or didn't. Please, review! 


	13. Firsts

Well, unlucky number thirteen certainly lived up to its superstitious billing. This one was an absolute _ordeal_ to write; I started and discarded at least four prompts, and when I finally settled on this one it went through more drafts than any other chapter ever. Arrggh. It was so _frustrating..._

But it's all better now, and here we are, with a brand new chapter! Yeah. So, read, enjoy, tell me what you think, and hopefully the next chapter will be quicker, and easier, and I can get this OmaxShu kick out of my system...

Danger! Danger! Severe Tokka warning! Danger! Those who are Shipping Intolerant should leave their seats now...

For the rest of you, heeeeere we go!

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The room was dark and flickering, warm wooden walls dancing with the shivering light from scores of candles wedged into cracks on tables and clusters of lanterns dangling from the rafters. Sound rose and fell with the surges of shadow against the walls and windows; the shriek and laughter of children, the low slow rumble of more mature conversation, the raucous brawling of the belligerent and the bawdy singing of the drunk, They all echoed and buzzed in the tavern's corners, blending and blurring together into a general noise of celebration. Bright and brittle threads of music twined through the air and out through the wide windows to curl about the waning moon; breaths drawn out by flutes and rattles clanked out by drums drifted out, and it seemed that they would drift on out across the entire Earth Kingdom, out to the mountains, out to the sea, out of this one little unit of space where there was happiness and rejoicing.

The tavern was spacious, tall and wide enough to contain most of the village, but even so it seemed to be crowded, with people jostling against each other and parents hoisting up their children to see above the crowd to where the Avatar, in all of his blue-arrowed glory, was seated, chatting nonchalantly to the village head as though completely unaware that he was being gawked and whispered at from all sides. Years of anxious crowds and teeming squares and jam-packed palaces had conditioned him to fame in ways that were often astounding as they were unassuming. Aang looked loose and relaxed, his now-well-muscled and lanky frame half-stretched out over the tavern's bar, his great blazing grin and wide innocent eyes carving swaths of laughter and adoration through the crowd.

Sokka, lurking at the back of that crowd, considered sulking but then thought better of it. Aang was acting cool and suave and altogether manly (even if it was unintentional), and even though he was most clearly and publicly Katara's property, he was still earning far too much admiration from the young women in the crowd. And even though they were only stopping in the small Earth Kingdom town for one night, two at the most, Sokka decided that his manly pride was at stake; he felt compelled to prove that he could be smoother and more manly than an arrow-headed bald kid with big googly eyes who still answered to "Twinkletoes".

_Right._ Sokka could almost feel the fire come into his eyes at the thought; he struck his most dashing and manly pose, almost unconsciously noting his heartbeat, breathing, vibrations (when had he started noticing those things?) and trying to force them into patterns of bravado and daring. _I'm ready, _he growled to himself, remembering the hunter, the warrior, the predator with his mighty boomerang. _Avatar, Shmavatar. Those ladies won't know what hit them!_

Several minutes passed.

It was only after several more long cricket-chirping minutes had dragged by, and the ladies continued to hang on to the Avatar rather than throw themselves on top of him, that Sokka allowed his macho pose to relax a bit. He tried, rather halfheartedly, to flex the impressive muscles which had been formed from battle and training and running from Toph; this produced no results either, and he was prevented from trying again by a little voice in his head that had piped up and begun berating him for being such an idiot. This was nothing unusual, though; Sokka heard voices calling him an idiot all the time, both inside and outside his own skull. The unusual thing now was that he was getting the distinct impression that this voice would throw rocks at him if he disobeyed its command. He wondered why.

Then his wondering was cut short by the realization that Aang was still getting more girls than he was, and that he was still depressingly alone at the back of the tavern, surrounded by throngs of people intent on worshipping the Avatar for bringing about the end of the war which had ravaged their lands and their lives.

That was it, Sokka decided, his mind having been robbed of its higher functions by exhaustion and politics. That was the very last straw. If he wasn't going to be worshipped, then he was going to sulk. And sulk he did, rather well; he had had plenty of practice throughout his life. When his shoulders slumped, they did so with the utmost impression of defeat and resentment; when he sighed conspicuously, it was the very embodiment of sullenness; when he glared, lesser beings trembled beneath his gaze; and when he pouted, others were reduced to tears on his behalf.

Well, most others, anyway. His amazing skills of empathy and expression seemed to make no impression whatsoever on Toph, who at that moment came tramping over from the bar with a mug of beer in her hands and a self-satisfied smile on her face. Sokka's warrior instincts, which shrilled at any sign of danger, alerted him just in time to catch a glimpse of her black glossy bun and her pale golden face, sunburned pink (inlaid with misty pale green eyes like pearls, his mind sang, but he shushed it), and then she was upon him. The mug was shoved into his hands, and he just had time to grasp it before she thumped his back sharply with a small fist, forcing him to straighten up out of his sulking slouch with a half-swallowed yelp of surprise; grinning brightly, Toph hit him again, this time on the shoulder, completely oblivious to his dark, despairing glare.

"Stop being an idiot, Snoozles," she called cheerfully, fighting to be heard over the rumbles and roars of the crowded room. "You're twenty years old, and I can feel you pouting like a baby even through the wooden floor." She stomped one foot for emphasis, and Sokka found his gaze drawn down to her bare feet, pressed against the hard wooden boards of the floor; he was slightly surprised to find himself thinking of Katara and fighting back a grin (some things would never change; for example, some heiresses would never be civilized, and some Waterbenders would never stop trying to civilize them).

"I'm not an idiot—" he started to explain, but before he could make it beyond that first protest, the crowd burst into uproar, Aang was hidden from view in a rush of incoherent excitement, and Toph's head snapped up, her opaque eyes glinting (or was that the candlelight?) and a rapt expression on her face as she drank in the new furor of half-melodious sounds (Sokka was sure he was half-crazy from disappointment and wine).

"The storyteller's starting!" Toph hissed, and sure enough the tavern was settling down again, and Sokka managed to look through gaps between jostling shoulders to see Aang up by the bar, now surrounded by children and talking animatedly to a grizzled old man whom he seemed to have pulled from the crowd. Another moment more, and a sudden, eerie silence fell over the gathered people; Sokka, standing on tiptoe, managed to see Aang and his swarm of children collapsing down onto the ground, and the old man moving out in front of the bar to address the assembled village.

The storyteller cleared his throat. Sokka stole a sideways look at Toph; she had turned towards him and was looking up into his eyes with a rapt and eager expression on her face, and she looked so happy that for a moment his heart leapt up and pulsed in his throat. Then he realized that she wasn't looking at him at all, she was only angling her ears so as to better catch the waves of the old man's voice; the childish excitement on her face wasn't for him, but for the tale they were about to hear (Toph often forgot to keep track of who she was looking at, and how that person might feel about being pinned beneath her cloudy gaze).

"Now who's being a baby?" Sokka muttered sullenly, but Toph good-naturedly stamped on his foot to shut him up, and his yelp of pain was hidden underneath the old man's voice, which suddenly washed out over the crowd in a grizzled roar as old as mountains.

"Tonight is a night of celebration!" he called, to slight cheers and soft murmurs of approval from his rapt audience. "For one hundred years, war has decimated our lives. Soldiers have terrorized our children, battles have swept through our fields and forests, the weapons of hatred and fear have cut down our brave young men, our sons and brothers; and tonight, finally, after so much pain and hardship, our humble village has the great honor of hosting the Avatar, the single soul that brought us the long-awaited peace!"

This was met with more cheering, much wilder and more violent this time; a few people leapt to their feet, applauding frantically, and out of the corner of his eye Sokka thought he could see Aang blush. It took the old man a few minutes to quiet the people down, and in that time Sokka managed to swallow his resentment at not being mentioned in the little speech. Instead, his attention was captured by the absorbing task of trying not to look at Toph, whose opaque gray-green eyes were still boring into his skull.

"The Avatar has asked me to tell you all a tale tonight," the storyteller trumpeted again, and the crowd murmured and fell silent. "This wise soul has asked me to remind you of our past, for it is from the past that we learn how to conquer the future. Therefore, I will tell of another great war and another great peace. I will tell a tale of love, and from it let us all learn the great healing power love possesses,and use that power to heal our nation's scars in the coming days."

There was a brief, depthless breath of silence, a hush that seemed to hold in it the flickering shades of a million stories, like the candle-shadows dancing between the windowpanes. Then the old man began to speak again, but his voice was not his own; it echoed as though from across a vast gulf of time, it seemed to speak not in words but in images that blasted bright into the minds of the waiting audience. The story spoke, not to their minds, but to their hearts; Sokka was not hearing it, but _seeing _it, feeling it as close as the wind outside the walls and the heat of Toph pressed beside him. (He felt that he was transported countless miles and countless years, to a place and time that the story built up before him; he was far away from the crowded tavern, yet that heat beside him remained.)

"Long ago," the story began, "A man and woman met on a mountaintop, and they fell in love."

Those words evoked something old in the listeners, something deep. It was the oldest beginning, the first story. The rest unfolded as naturally as breathing.

"They had come wandering, each from opposite sides of the mountain, each far from family and home; they had each been lost and frightened, but upon seeing each other through the cloud mists of the mountain's peak, they felt immediately that they had discovered the source of all safety, all comfort, all strength. They walked together but did not speak. It was not until they reached the summit that they told each other their names. The woman's name was Oma. The man's name was Shu.

"They stayed on that mountaintop through the night. In the morning they discovered that their two villages were at war, embroiled in the grip of a bitter blood feud that had lasted without cease and without cause for years beyond memory. The hatred their peoples felt for each other was great; but it was not great enough to douse the love of Oma and Shu, and they swore to meet again, though it be treachery to their villages and blasphemy to their families. They swore to meet despite the soldiers or assassins that might try to stop them, for no harm they suffered would be as great as the pain they felt when apart.

"Over many days, many weeks, many moons, many years, they found ways to be together, in secret times under the watch of the jealous moon, in hidden places under the guard of the watchful mountains. They met in the wild places, the untamed places, where other people would not go, for they feared being discovered and separated; there, in the thorny thickets and ragged caves of the country, they encountered many fearsome beasts and sheer cliffs, but no obstacle was so great that they could not conquer it together.

"Many times during these hidden meetings they saw the fleeting shadows of great hulking animals, larger than a man, which seemed to be able to move through solid rock. They caught glimpses of these mighty mountain creatures, and called them badgermoles; they did not find it astounding that the animals could change the shape of mountains, for the war between their villages grew ever more violent and their minds were occupied with other concerns.

"Then, one day, Shu arrived at the meeting place at the determined time; he waited and waited, but Oma did not appear. Just as he began to fear the worst, thinking of his beloved tortured, imprisoned, or killed, she appeared, out of breath and stumbling through trees with her clothes rent and torn. The soldiers of her village had caught her trying to sneak away, and pursued her; they were young and swift, and approaching fast! Shu could hear the rhythmic tramp of their footsteps and their war drums echoing among the trees!

"Swiftly the two lovers ran for safety, terrified, hearing always the footfalls of death marching on their heels. They dodged through bramble and behind boulders, they plunged through the forest until finally they reached the rocky foothills of the mountains, where the slope was steep and treacherous and they could go no further. Breathless, clutching each other's hands, they found a small hollow in the stone and huddled under its small protection, praying and weeping at the thought that they were to be so severed by death.

"Then, just as the ring of marching drums was deafening, just as it seemed the soldiers must surely be upon them, a great boulder rolled in front of the hollow, shielding them from view. Quickly the lovers turned around, only to be confronted with a pair of enormous, white, slitted eyes, staring at them from out of darkness; where before there had been only the side of the hill, now an enormous tunnel stretched, taller than a man and wider than three could walk abreast.

"The sounds echoed into the now-vast cave of the soldiers moving past, singing their songs of death as they marched on to search elsewhere for the fugitives. Moved almost to tears by their good fortune, the lovers took each other's hands and began walking toward the eyes of the badgermole that had saved them; if it was vicious, then at least they would repay its kindness with a meal, but they felt certain that it would not devour those whom it had protected.

"And indeed they were right. Whether it was moved by their prayers, their scent, or that love which even animals can sense, the badgermole turned from them and led them into the tunnel, into the heart of the mountain where it nested. They learned from it and its kind the secrets of the earth, the breath of boulders and the formation of rock; they learned to shift stone with only their wills, and they became the first Earthbenders. This new power gave them untold joy, for with it they could tear tunnels in the rock, a great twisting labyrinth that none but them could navigate, and they could be together without fear of discovery or death.

"They existed for a time in a blissful world of their own, protected by the mountains from all harm; but there came a time when the pain and hatred of the outside world grew so strong as to overcome even their love. There came a day when Oma crept into the tunnels underneath the mountains in the darkness of the new moon, and found that Shu had not come to meet her. Wracked with worry and grief, she ran swiftly to the battlefields where the two opposing villages had butchered each other earlier that day; it was here that she finally saw her beloved's face, pale and waxen, streaked with blood. His eyes were closed, his breath stilled, and the sight that Oma had yearned for only shattered her heart and bruised her soul. Shu had been claimed by the war.

"Oma's wrath was terrible. The rage of volcanoes erupted in her, the fire of the molten rock that feeds the earth; she screamed her grief to the night sky, she tore apart the battlefield with her new powers of Earthbending, she threw pillars upwards to stab at the moon and buried the corpse of her love among the rubble and rocks. Hearing the crashes and screams of tortured stone, the people of both villages rose from their beds and ran to the battlefield, only to see a woman held aloft in a hurricane of fissures and spires. The Earthbending storm was so violent that they feared for their lives; Oma could have easily killed them all, she could have split the earth beneath them or crushed them with the bones of mountains in revenge for her fallen love. Instead, she raised a pillar under her feet, raising her up until she was level with the moon; she declared that the war was over, that the two villages were to live in peace and never again lift up arms against each other.

"The power of Oma's love for Shu had fueled her Earthbending, and now it fueled the peace that she had brought about. The villagers were weary of war, and they allowed her to lead them; she buried those who had been so sadly slain, she gave them back to the earth from which they had come, she set about healing the scars that the fighting had wrought upon the people and the land. She taught the Earthbending skills she had learned to the children of the two villagers, and bade them in turn to use their powers to bring about peace; and when she died, many years later in a golden age she had created, she was welcomed into the spirit world and into her beloved's arms."

For the first time, the rhythm of the story slowed, dropped into a slow decline, and Sokka blew out a breath and became aware of the tavern around him again, the crowd and Aang up at the front and Katara beside him, and Toph's shoulder pressing into Sokka's arm and her eyes staring vaguely a little past his left ear. The world felt too solid and too real after the story's wild jaunt through imagination, and Sokka breathed another sigh as the storyteller's voice shifted tones, back into reality.

"Let us remember Oma and Shu," the old man intoned, as the crowd stirred gently, waking. "Let us remember their strength and their quest for peace. Let us remember Oma, the first and the greatest Earthbender the world has ever seen; let us remember that her power will never be surpassed, for it was fueled by love."

Toph was moving now too, shifting her weight from foot to foot (which was unusual, as she usually stood rooted like a rock). Sokka gave in to the driving voice in his skull and turned his head to look down at her, only to be surprised by the slight scowl now clouding over her pretty porcelain features. He had no time to think more deeply into this mystery, however, for the storyteller called one last sentiment about love and healing that Sokka didn't listen to, and then the crowd surged to its feet and swirled through the door of the tavern, breaking out into the cool night air. Sokka and Toph were caught up in its movement; before they had a chance to fully return from the story's grip they found themselves standing at the edge of the little village, with the coolgrasspressing up beneath their feet and the stars glimmering overhead.

Sokka blinked, bewildered, and looked around for Aang, but the Avatar was nowhere to be found, presumably swept off somewhere by adoring fans. Sokka didn't even bother to look around for Katara; she was undoubtedly wherever Aang was. The village people were quickly scattering back to their homes, and then there was only he and Toph, standing in the middle of a rapidly widening empty space, with the night pressing wide and dark and cool on every side.

Sokka glanced at Toph again, almost against his will, as though her blank eyes possessed some sort of magnetic charge that drew his gaze whether he wished it to or not. She was standing silently beside him, staring into her clouded middle distance, hands clasped loosely behind her back and feet shifting slightly in the dew-beaded grass, feeling the earth. She showed no sign of beginning to move, and looked quite content to wait just where she was for the rest of the night; the small scowl had returned to her face, her brow was furrowed in concentration, and it was evident that she was deep in thought.

"I think it's best if we sleep by Appa tonight," Sokka said experimentally into the rapidly deepening silence. When there was no response, he raised his voice a little, speaking more loudly than was strictly necessary. "That way we won't have to bother the villagers if we want to get an early start tomorrow."

He glanced hopefully at Toph, but there was no reaction; she didn't even nod to indicate that she had heard him. His gaze wandered over her pursed lips, and something sparked in his brain that was stifled before it could become a full-fledged thought. Quickly he wrenched his eyes away from her face, instead turning his back to her to scan the dark horizon for the great white lump that was Appa. Against the dark dome of the heavens the bison almost glowed; Sokka found him immediately, and then was left standing stupidly, not wanting to turn around and look at Toph again for fear of what his brain would do to him. Instead, he hesitantly took a few steps forward, dragging his feet a little to smear the vibrations in the direction of the bison, hopefully indicating to Toph that he was going to walk in that direction now, and she should follow. There was no sound of echoing footsteps, however, and Sokka imagined he could feel her lead-heavy gaze resting on his shoulders still; he turned to find her still standing where he had left her, an expression of fierce discontent on her face, apparently with no intent of moving at all.

Sokka blew out a frustrated breath, then stomped back the three steps that separated them and grasped Toph's arm, tugging her gently forward. She apparently snapped out of whatever daze she had been lost in, for the stormy expression faded and she strode forward willingly, though still without speaking a word. It wasn't until they had progressed a fair way towards Appa's silhouette that Sokka realized he had forgotten to let go of her arm.

At just that moment she pulled away from his grip, but with none of the anger that she usually unleashed on him when he tried to guide her. Instead, the thoughtful look returned, and Sokka slowed his pace a bit to accommodate her shorter stride, waiting for her to speak.

"That guy didn't do a very good job," she said finally, her voice heavy with dissatisfaction and resentment. "I didn't like that story. Why did Aang have him tell it, anyway? Some girl's boyfriend gets killed and she tells two villages full of idiots to stop killing each other. Big deal." She shrugged dismissively, but her voice grew sharper, more pointed, vicious even. "I'll bet that girl wasn't even that great of an Earthbender, anyway."

She couldn't see Sokka's incredulous stare, but her shoulders tensed in anticipation of it. Sokka, who was not stupid no matter what his sister said, noticed the motion, performed a brilliant feat of deduction, arrived at a conclusion, and smirked.

Then he remembered that she couldn't see the smirk, so he would have to make his declaration another way. He came to an abrupt stop, so suddenly that she walked past him before she noticed he wasn't moving; then, as she turned bemusedly face him again, he threw out an arm, dramatically pointing an accusatory finger. "Toph," he crowed triumphantly, "You're _jealous_!"

This was met by a blank stare (an expression which, when it came to Toph, took on a whole new meaning). "Jealous?" she asked incredulously, and shook her head, her black bangs swaying before her useless eyes. "Jealous, of the girl who got stuck in a cave with a badgermole and then got her true love killed? I think your boomerang's hit you in the head once too often, Snoozles." She turned on her heel to keep walking, then stood with her back to him, waiting for him to move. When he didn't, she turned around again, this time crossing her arms over her chest and tapping one foot impatiently. "What is it?" she demanded. "What's holding you up? I don't want to stand here all night, Meathead, so start moving."

"You're jealous," he taunted, his voice almost sing-song despite her scorn and threats. "You're jealous because that guy said Oma was the greatest Earthbender in the world and no one could be better than her. You're jealous because he said she's a better Earthbender than you are!"

Toph shook her head in a violent denial, but her face flushed a bright crimson and Sokka let out a loud bray of laughter, which continued even after a clump of dirt went whizzing dangerously close to his head.

"I'm not _jealous_!" Toph shouted, her feet sliding apart and fists clenching as she unconsciously slid into a defensive stance. "I'm just being _practical_! I mean, this was thousands of years ago! Of course Earthbending's improved since then!"

"We're not talking about Earthbending in general, we're talking about one Earthbender in particular," Sokka countered, still with the sing-song taunt in the lilt of his voice. "I gotta tell you, Toph, I've heard this story before and even seen pictures of it. I've seen the caves they built and I really gotta say, it looks like Oma was really powerful." He was egging her on now, dangling the insult to her pride out before her as bait.

She rose to it magnificently, as he'd known she would. Her flush deepened, and he had to scramble for balance as the soil under his feet began to tremble ever-so-slightly. "I could have carved a bunch of stupid tunnels," Toph growled, but then what remained of her composure drained away and she was shouting, angry. "I would have moved the whole stupid mountain! Just because she was the first doesn't mean she was the best!"

"She did what no one had ever done before," Sokka shot back, thoroughly enjoying himself. "She figured out how to control an entire element pretty much from scratch. That takes some talent and some power."

"She watched some big smelly animals digging tunnels!" Toph scoffed, feigning indifference now. "I could have done that, no problem. In fact, I bet that's it; _she _probably used Earthbending like an animal. First isn't best."

Sokka grinned brightly because he knew she couldn't see it. "Maybe not," he conceded (but still with a hint of smugness in his voice), "but it is pretty damn good."

The implication hung off the end of the sentence, the smug _better than you_ that was plain in the tone of his voice. Toph's face was so flushed now it was almost glowing, from the heat of argument and something else entirely; she stomped the three steps that separated them, moving like a hurricane, her feet slamming down with the force of avalanche until she was standing directly in front of him, squinting fiercely at his chin, her finger poking in his chest. "You don't believe me, Ponytail?" she growled. "Fine! I'll prove it!" And she reached up, grabbed a fistful of his collar, yanked his head down and kissed him.

After a hot, bright, breathless moment they parted, panting and struggling with strange new desires and suppressed old dreams that came rushing in to fill them as though a dam had burst. Sokka felt as though something had snapped inside of his brain; suddenly everything rushed in upon him—the unconscious noting of heartbeat and breathing, the bizarre imagery of his daydreams, and the fact that the little voice his head threw rocks—all of it slammed into him at high speeds and then he couldn't breathe, as though the kiss had been less of a gesture of affection and more of a brutal blow.

"There," Toph gasped triumphantly, her face still reddened, a grin fighting to emerge on her face. "I told you! That was our first kiss, but it isn't the best. First isn't best. We can do better than that, can't we?"

Sokka smiled almost lazily, with a sudden joyous realization of the night that stretched on before them and the wide, cool, empty country on either side, and all of it just for him and Toph, for wishes and whispers that he had been strangling inside his own soul, half-consciously, for as long as he could remember. His voice was soft, untroubled, almost gentle. "There's only one way to find out."

Sitting on the hill in the cold dew-laden grass, they discovered that Toph had been right; first was by no means best. The second kiss was better than the first had been, and the third better than the second, and the fourth even better than the third, and so on. They tested the principle over and over, carefully handling this hot new thing inside them that shook and scalded and froze; then, even in the small hours of the dark blue morning when they stretched side-by-side on the slope, barely touching, they found that each kiss, each brush of skin against skin, was infinitely better than the one before. And so it went, stories and traveling forgotten, until dawn broke over the opposite horizon and flooded the mountains with light.

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The End. What do you think? Good, bad, ugly, Shakespeare? Review, please! 


	14. Rebirth

I like this one, I really do. I feel really good about it, that nice warm self-satisfied contented feeling you get after sitting down and writing something you know was worth taking the time to write. This is my first shot at trying to imply something without coming right out and saying it, so you all have to review and tell me if you understood what I was hinting at like crazy! Okay? Okay.

This is in the same continuity as the last one, i.e., in this one 'Firsts' has happened, but has nothing to do with the story. After this, my Oma kick is over. Really. I swear.

Being the shamefully absentminded oaf that I am, I forgot in last chapter's Author Note to thank my wonderful beta metro.max, who helped me get number 13 posted. She's awesome, go read her stuff.

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Toph had spent most of her short life trying very, very hard not to be small and she felt, for the most part, that she had succeeded. Her friends had stopped treating like an invalid child after she'd thumped them with rocks a few times, kings and chieftains they met in the course of their travels quickly learned that she was a force to be reckoned with, and soldiers ran away when she approached them in a manner that was even remotely threatening; all of this made her fiercely proud, made her grin with feral pleasure as she thought that she had finally succeeded in proving to the world that she was more than a crippled child, more than a blind heiress. Therefore, she theorized, it was no surprise that walking through grass taller than her head was irritating; she kept having to bat the long, willowy stalks out of the way, and each time it was a reminder of how much taller than her they reached. She walked steadily through the five-foot-high grasses, sliding her feet in a straight line over the hard, rocky ground, not noticing as sharp pebbles scratched the soles of her bare feet. Occasionally the tall feathery tops of the grasses bent down and tickled her useless eyes; she brushed them away, suppressing a feeling of smallness and irritation that she pretended was because of the flora but was actually due to something else altogether. 

She took a deep breath in an effort to calm her mounting frustration, and focused on the gray senses of earth-sight that spoke to her in the shifting of pebbles, the rumbling of rocks. The ground she stood on curved away into a steep slope on all sides, which then leapt for the sky into a series of jagged mountains, clawing for the heavens; she listened hard for other footsteps, felt carefully for the weight of some other person, but there was none. She was, as far as she could tell, alone on the idyllic hilltop in the middle of the mountain range. This illusion was quickly shattered by a whoop of familiar laughter from above, the resonating, grating roar of a sky bison swooping between crags and reveling in the breathtaking sight. She imagined the scene as it would be if she could sense it all at once; she thought of the sensations of rock and ground and grass and covered them with the creak of the leather saddle, the smell and thick touch of Appa's fur, the brushing breeze of Aang's airbending and Sokka's whooping laugh.

Then the sound faded, probably as Appa curved away into some more distant mountains, and Toph could imagine herself alone again. She tore her mind away from her friends, who were perfectly happy entertaining themselves up in the sky, and focused it again on the ground beneath her feet, this time feeling down, down, pressing into the veins and tough rocky layers of the earth. She stood on the crown of a hill, with the midafternoon sunlight pressing warm and golden on her shoulders, and down below her feet she could sense a yawning gulf, a vast emptiness, a network of tunnels and caverns stretching for miles, for centuries. She felt, at the boundary where earth stopped and cavern began, a crisscrossing, looping and swirling line of crystals imbedded in the cave ceiling; she felt, in the central chamber directly beneath where she stood, two monstrous statues that reared on either side of a circular stone door.

She stood on a hill in the midst of the mountains, studying the Cave of Two Lovers with the earth-sight that only she possessed, and she felt that terrible smallness welling up from the bottom of her soul to engulf her in its shadows again.

The distance was far, and her earth-sight grew blurry and vague as she sought out the cave adorned with the two tombs, to the point where she could no longer make out the runes and carvings on the pedestals, but she didn't care. She had examined them already in detail, she had pressed her hands into the pictures until they had been imprinted into her palms, she had listened to Sokka reading the words in his soft but echoing voice; even now, standing in the daylight and the open air, she could feel the story tingling beneath her fingertips. This was why she had dragged her friends back here, this was why she had made them detour on their way to Omashu, this was why she had torn open a tunnel from the surface and threaded her way through the tunnels without a moment's hesitation, without fear of being lost. This was why she had claimed to have a bet to settle with Sokka (they had already settled it to her satisfaction, but it made a convenient excuse); it was all to be standing here, with the caverns under her feet arching to support her, and the story carved out under her hands.

_Once upon a time…_

She had asked her friends to go ahead without her, because she didn't think she could bear to be in the sky just yet, not awed as she was by the scope of the caverns and enamored with their traces of past lives. She could not bear to be away from the earth, not with her hands still covered in stone-dust and story-runes and a strange pressure building up in the back of her mind that refused to form itself into words. Something had touched her down there in the caverns, not in the weepy way that Katara often spoke of being touched or moved by a story or a song, but almost literally; something about the words, something about the shapes of the faces in the stone and the hands that had carved them, had reached into her soul and grabbed it, twisted it, shaken it. Something was tugging, pulling at her, even more than the siren call of the earth usually pulled. Something about the story, about the heroine, about the caves that still existed like the bones of those who had made them, a symbol, a story waiting to be discovered.

She had an uneasy feeling that the caverns, the tunnels, the tombs and the statues, all of it had been made and continued to exist just for the purpose of being there for her, and only her, to find.

It was a crazy sensation, a lunatic idea, but as soon as it coalesced in her mind she found herself knowing that it was true, knowing in a deep dark place in her bones that resonated with the essence of the earth. The caves had sung her a welcome in vibrations, in bat-wings and landslides; the rumblings of badgermoles deep in the earth had echoed up and amplified, so that the caves hummed to her footsteps and trembled in excitement under her searching hands. It was more than simple sound, it went beyond natural acoustics, she was sure of this with a rock-solid certainty that she could never have explained without sounding like a fool. She just knew it, knew in a place that was deeper than thought, knew that the caves were alive, and they had welcomed her with love and recognition, welcomed her and only her. They had embraced her and engulfed her as utterly and as joyously as though she were an old friend, and they were finally being reunited for the first time in a long time… in thousands and thousands of years.

The story came back to her, in bits and pieces, in pebbles and faults (the real story, not the idealized one, not the one that had been carved into panels and words; Toph had learned her story from the earth itself). A man and a woman; he was brave but gentle, she was beautiful and fragile-looking but so strong and so explosive that the caves still remembered her footsteps. He had been lost, and she had been exploring, when their paths crossed. They had met, and fallen in love, and snuck into the hills and been threatened and escaped death, and they had kissed and whispered, and then one day he had been killed. Then she, the warrioress of the hills, she the singer of the mountains, she the wild woman confined by propriety and society, she unleashed her wrath and her power upon those who had wronged her. She took revenge for her gentle love as he would never have done, she screamed her rage and anguish to the earth in pulses of earthquake and obsidian, and the earth had risen to her aid. She had torn apart the battlefields with her bare hands, she had with only her hands and her feet ripped open the layers of the eons-old earth and proved, once and for all, that beneath her outer smallness lay a power so great and so wide that the mountains themselves could not encompass it. And she had left behind the networks of caves and caverns, the swirls and curves of stone, left them like a thumbprint or a song embedded in the earth…

She had left them so that, years and centuries and millennia later, Toph Beifong would hear a story and stumble upon them again.

The caves remembered Oma. Their memory stretched back to the hot, smoldering, sunless days of their creation, and they remembered the woman who had carved them from their bedrock and given them shape. They didn't have words, of course, they didn't have minds, but they had memories in the forms of fossils and crevices and cracks; Toph, who had learned to speak the language of stone playing at Earthbending in her father's garden, asked them for their tales and learned about their past. She learned about the badgermoles that had drifted through them for millennia, she learned about the unfailing strength of mountains, she learned about the winds and the rains that had washed silt and sand from the hillsides but never worn away the stone beneath. She learned, most of all, about the first strange resonance of human hand shaping mountains, she learned about the first trembling touch of intelligent purpose to those rocks that had existed just for the purpose of existing. She learned about Oma, about Earthbending, about strength, about love; and she learned it in her own language, in the tongue of mountains and hills, more solid and lasting than any ethereal story could ever be.

The stone had sung to her, trembled under her, showed her its joy and love for Oma, she of the second sight. Because, Toph realized suddenly, that was what the ancient woman had done; she had been blind to the hills and the mountains, and she had learned a different sight, a different method of perception, she had learned to navigate by means of stone and shale, she had learned to listen to rock and rubble and use it to form her own picture of the world. As the thought occurred to her, Toph felt the sense of smallness, of insignificance well up in her again, and in a flash of insight that could not have been put into words, she suddenly understood why.

The sentiments of the stone came echoing back to her, the things the caves had told her, the way they had sung to her touch like to that of an old, familiar friend, even though she had never set foot into their confines before. She remembered their tales of Oma, the shapes of their memories.

_She learned to see in new, different ways, she learned to see the stone…_

Toph stopped walking, she knelt slowly to the ground heedless of the pebbles that cut her knees, and pressed a hand to the sleeping earth, feeling its rumbling and rising, letting it flower into the gray sense of earth-sight behind her eyes.

_She was wild and caged, she was fighting to be free…_

The thick dry soil here reminded Toph improbably of the Beifong garden in fall, of the way she had been used to sneak out her window and grab double handfuls of the earth in a desperate act of defiance that had no audience. It reminded her of that irrepressible yearning, soulsick longing to be out in the world, barefoot and strong.

_She was a loyal lover and a fierce fighter…_

Toph thought of the wild jumbled chaos of shaking and screaming that was battle, she thought of a masked and helmeted Fire Nation soldier sneaking up on a (defenseless) nonbending boy with a boomerang, she thought of the soldier raising one hand to strike in a burst of fire, only to find himself struck by a rock that crashed into him in a snapping of ribs, then he hit the ground and was buried up to his neck, and perhaps he caught a glimpse of opaque milky white eyes before he watched his entire regiment tossed aside by a mountain that had not existed a moment before.

_She was the greatest Earthbender who ever lived…_

Toph remembered the sweet sticky pulse of heat and light and sound, she remembered the taste of sweat and blood and dirt, she remembered the thick choking stench of bodies packed together and the weak, thin groaning of a hugely muscled titan of a man reduced to a shuddering wreck in the middle of the arena-turned-stage. She remembered the roar of the crowd so loud, to deafening, that she really couldn't hear it anymore; she remembered the pain, the triumph, the crash and ring and roar of victory.

The memories and the stone-songs became overwhelming; Toph stood, and was surprised to find that she was standing tall, as tall as she could, standing straight with her head thrown back and the sunlight on her face, and her chest swelling with a strange, golden, pulsing sort of pride. She still felt small, yes, because the caverns were so big and the story was so great and the years were so many, she felt small because the stone had spoken to her of souls gone and souls returned and life that cycled out of light and into darkness and into light again, she felt small because she realized suddenly that she was only one small part of that cycle, while it was such a large part of her. But the pride was there, curiously, improbably, because she realized also that the story, the caves, these were a part of her too, in a way that was deeper and more personal than she had expected. It was more than the love of an Earthbender for the mountains, it was more than the admiration of a champion for a master, it was more complex, closer to the core of her very soul. She felt these caves as though she had carved them once, long ago, with her very own hands, and the caves echoed the thought.

Her friends must have been circling near and low, for she felt a cool shadow engulf her for a moment and then a strong gust of air, and then there was the sound of impact and Appa's great weight was pressing into the earth at the bottom of Toph's little hill. Katara was calling; her voice carried easily in the crisp, cold mountain air, it drifted out on an errant breeze, too faint to be separated into words but with an underlying tone of urgency and impatience. Quickly, without thinking, Toph stamped a foot on the ground, calling up a pillar that stood thick and square, a bit higher than Toph herself; with quick, decisive movements she slashed hands through the air, she shaved slivers of stone from the pillar's girth, she chiseled lines and patterns out of the unyielding stone. Toph was not an artist by any conventional sense of the word, but she knew the shapes of things and the feel of things; she knew the lines and tensions of her own body when she dropped into a fighting stance, she knew how thing should be shaped, and of necessity things that were shaped as they should be looked as they should have. With precise, calculated movements, with full knowledge of what she was doing and why she was doing it, Toph carved a woman from the living rock; she sculpted Oma as the hills had described her, placed her on a pedestal, and lifted her to stand guardian over the tunnels that she had carved and the wars that she had ended.

Aang, Sokka, and Katara were too far away, but an observer standing beside Toph on that deserted hilltop might have noticed a few swiftly passing details of the scene, as the young Earthbender stood quietly for a moment, head bowed as though paying homage before the statue of the old. The observer might have noticed a certain similarity in two faces, the one living and the one stone; he or she might have noticed an identical curve of the cheekbones, a slant of the eyes, things that were hard to detect by looking, but were obvious to the touch. If the observer were astute, he or she might have noticed that, though the two faces looked radically different, if one were to close one's eyes and feel their contours with dust-covered fingers, they would have felt exactly the same.

The observer might also have noticed that the statue's eyes were blank and smooth, free of pupils, piercing and blind.

Toph spent only a moment before the statue; Katara's voice was growing louder and more urgent, and chiming in underneath her sweet sing-song call were Sokka's rougher tones. Preoccupied with this strange new thing swelling inside of her, Toph turned on her heel and started making her way over to Appa's silhouette, brushing the tall grass away, cherishing the feeling of the caves beneath her as she walked. As she grew closer to the bison, she felt another, smaller impact against the earth, and then Sokka's silhouette was standing waiting for her, having slid down from the bison's back to help her mount; she reached the first of the bison's six huge feet, flashed Sokka a grin, and stomped her foot, throwing up a pillar that lifted her up to Appa's saddle without his help (she was strong, she could tear apart battlefields with her bare hands, she could conquer badgermoles and mountains). Sokka sighed, made a slight irritated noise, but climbed up after her amiably enough as the pillar sank back into the rock from which it had sprung.

Toph felt a strange contentment, sitting with her legs stretched out before her, leaning on the leather wall that bordered Appa's saddle on all sides. She listened happily to the creaking and chattering of her friends moving about, securing gear, preparing for the long flight to Omashu; then Sokka sat down beside her, not quite touching, not close enough to brush against her arm but still entirely closer than best friends should sit. Toph imagined she could feel the heat of his blush radiating out to press into her skin, but he didn't move away.

"You know," Aang commented as they made ready to lift off, "I feel so strange every time we come here, so small. I don't know why, but being here always make me think about all the past Avatars, about all the souls that came before me and then turned into me. It's something so ancient, so powerful, it always makes me remember my past incarnations. It makes me really remember that my soul has done other things, lived other lives, before this one. It's weird. Do you know what I mean?"

Katara answered him, said something soothing and encouraging that Toph didn't listen to. She was distracted by Sokka, who had stretched his arms out casually along the back of the saddle (she could feel his sleeve brushing against her) and was now engaged in spreading them a little farther, a little farther, cautious as though afraid that if he stretched them out too far some poisonous animal waited to bite him, to punish him for his forwardness. Amused, Toph wondered when he would work up the guts to put his arm around her shoulders, and what her own reaction would be when he did.

"I wonder if Oma was a past Avatar," Aang said aloud, and the name drew Toph's attention back to his words, tugged on something buried deeper than her memory could reach. Her soul vibrated to the name, like the caves had vibrated to her footsteps, and Toph grinned, leaning further back with a strange self-satisfied slant to her smirk. She knew Oma wasn't a past Avatar, but she didn't tell Aang, because he would have asked her how she knew and she didn't want to tell him about her speculations, not just yet. She didn't say it aloud, but she didn't need to. She was secure in the knowledge within herself that though (_if_, her rational mind interjected,) Oma's soul walked the earth again, it did not walk in Aang.

Then Appa roared and thumped his tail, and they were hurtling up and away into the great wide emptiness of the sky.

* * *

The End.

So, did I make it obvious enough? Review and let me know!


	15. Ring

Yes, I've been gone for a sinfully long time, but now I'm back! And, to celebrate my re-immersion in this fandom, I've brought you another chapter full of Toph and Sokka goodness!

(I've been having a very love-hate relationship with Season 3. I love it, because it's a new season, but I hate it because Toph has barely played any part _at all_! She's just been standing around! There's been lots of Katara and Aang and Kataang, so maybe we'll see some Toph and Sokka stuff later on.)

A Random Author's Comment: I'm determined to popularize the term 'Kataango', invented by Invaderk (who is awesome, by the way). It applies to that scene in 'The Headband' which had me grinning like a maniac even though I'm not a particularly adamant Kataang shipper. It's just a wonderful word, and it made me smile. Go read Invaderk's stuff!

Also, I've got some lovely thoughts brewing for a multichap fic, so if I'm not updating it's probably because I'm working on that.

Okay, with the randomness over, let me present: the latest chapter of 'Of All Time', which takes place somewhere after the end of the war. Read and enjoy!

* * *

"You did _what_?" 

Really, Sokka mused to himself, he should have been more prepared for this. He should have expected something like this to happen; after all, hadn't he lived with the Avatar long enough to know that there was no such thing as a restful vacation, that every time it looked like the world was settling down something bizarre happened just to fill the void? Hadn't he learned by now that weird and psychotic coincidences followed all of the Avatar's friends like lost puppies, nipping constantly at their heels?

He had been dragged through circumstances more trying than this, more unexpected, more unbelievable and possibly catastrophic. All he was _really _dealing with was an incredibly powerful and decidedly arrogant noble family, who required his presence to help deal with their treasured only daughter, who happened to be blind and the greatest Earthbending master the world had ever seen and who had been sent to stay with them for a relaxing vacation… which obviously at this point wasn't going to happen.

Really, Sokka scolded himself, he was going soft, getting spoiled and trusting from weeks of nonthreatening diplomacy. When a man in green and gold had burst into the Avatar's impromptu throne room in Omashu and started babbling incoherently about Earthbenders and marriage and mountains, the first seeds of suspicion should have started itching at the back of Sokka's mind.

When he had managed to get a few drinks into the man and calm him down and the first words out of his mouth had been Toph's name, Sokka should have quietly and discreetly engaged the paranoid part of his brain and started fomenting conspiracy theories.

When the messenger had further elaborated that Toph was in trouble, or surrounded by trouble (where there was Toph there was always trouble, it only remained to be seen if she was the one causing it) and that he, Sokka (and _only_ Sokka), had to come at once, the paranoid part of the Water Tribe warrior's brain should have been quaking and screaming in the back of his skull.

But the war was over, had been over for some time, and the lack of conflict had apparently dulled his warrior's intuition, and his paranoia, for that matter; he had been expecting… well, he wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this.

His expectations were irrelevant now, he told himself sharply; now it was time to deal only in the facts, time to harness the powers of science and strategy that had carried him so successfully through a war of magic and mysticism. What were the facts of the situations, the strategies, the potential solutions to be wrung from reality's unyielding form?

There were things he knew. He knew, for instance, that he was no longer in the safe and luxurious palace of Omashu. He knew that he was standing in a sheltered shadowed grove at the base of a mountain, having been led and left there by a pale, official-looking man. He knew that the mighty Beifong estate was rising over a hill to his left, he could feel the predatory eye of the carved wooden winged boar on his back. He knew that the owner of that estate, the mighty Lord Lao Beifong, was standing before him and piercing him with a glance that was just as fierce, just as bloodthirsty, if less outright hostile. And he knew that, if what the man had told him was true, there was going to be hell to pay.

"You must understand, young man…" The lord's countenance was growing stormier, frostier by the second, and he looked regal and yet ridiculously out of place surrounded by the deep wild swamp-shadows beneath the trees, framed by the sheer smoke-blue face of the mountain. "You must understand, _Sokka_," the man corrected himself, with the words _Water Tribe peasant_ hanging unspoken in the air in the tone of his voice, "There are certain conventions which must be observed. No matter what… adventures my daughter has amused herself with in the past few years, she has a duty to herself, to her family, to her _nation _that must be fulfilled. She has no choice. She is still my daughter, and she is still under my authority…"

"Yeah, sure," Sokka muttered distractedly, ignoring the senseless buzzing of the man's voice (Toph? Authority? He must have been delusional), focusing instead on a rattling of bushes and rustling of leaves, a shuddering of movement off in the undergrowth that signaled someone's approach.

His quick glance took in a great, glittering, expansive explosion of green. It was a brilliant clear spring day and the sun was beating down in full force, blazing every blade of grass into sharp relief, making the trees burn from within, like candle wicks encased in emerald; he stood at the crown of a hill that formed one side of a small valley, and just below the ground dipped sharply into a grassy bowl before soaring up again into the ragged façade of forest-covered mountains. The entire tableau seemed to be a shading of green, from the sharp prickling bright jades of the grass and moss, to the deep primordial swamp-shadows of the mountain trees, etched and accented by the smooth smoke-blue of the stone itself.

Approaching swiftly from the direction of the low sprawling shadows of the manor house, Sokka caught sight of a different sort of green, a silhouette clad in almost-glowing green that billowed and glinted with golden gilt; as it approached, he was able to discern the painted mask of Lady Beifong and, walking closely in her path, a young man perhaps a few years older than Sokka himself. The newcomer was done up in the same glittering robes as the noble pair, and he was vaguely good-looking, in a rather slimy way. Sokka's gaze glossed over him, dismissed him as a servant or dignitary or something, and returned immediately to Lord Beifong's stormy countenance, which was slowly losing its lordly composure as the man realized that he was being either slighted or ignored.

"You must excuse my lack of hospitality," the lord said loudly, drawing Sokka's attention back to himself with a curt tone that disavowed any sort of regret at all. "I am afraid the circumstances under which we were forced to ask for your presence demand that we conduct business here, where the comforts of my home are unavailable to us."

Lady Beifong arrived at a sort of scuttling gait, and flitted up to whisper in her husband's ear; she reminded Sokka irresistibly of a sparrow, a nightingale, a small lovely songbird that clashed violently in his mind with Toph, the mountain, the force of nature. Lao Beifong nodded at his wife's assertion, and turned to address Sokka directly again, though still with the slight curling of his lip that broadcast his disgust at having to interact with such a peasant, such an obviously lowly life-form.

"This is Kahnu, the only son of the Pang family, who live in a village nearby." One long-fingered hand emerged from the lord's large sleeves to indicate the well-dressed young man, who stiffly inclined his upper body, just deeply enough to constitute a bow but just slightly enough to convey his own scorn. "When Toph returned to us," Lao Beifong continued, "we presented Kahnu to her as the lord he will someday be, with all of the wealth and influence that his family holds. She was blatantly disrespectful. She absolutely refused to show the deference due to someone of Kahnu's station, or even his father's station, and nothing we could say would persuade her otherwise; she would not act with the manners of propriety that we took such pains to teach her in her youth. Finally, out of desperation, we were forced to … reveal something we had hoped to withhold a little longer, in the hopes that it would get her to obey."

Sokka could feel Kahnu still scorching a lingering glare over the length of his body, but he ignored it. He didn't care what the lordlet thought of him, he was completely unaffected by his malice; he felt muscles tensing and his teeth clenching together, not because of the other man's contempt, but because he could feel the tone of hesitance and warning in Lao Beifong's voice, he knew that the next words spoken would be important. The next sentence would be a vital clue as to why he had been summoned from Omashu, why he was now speaking to an important lord in the middle of the forest, why that selfsame lord kept stealing nervous looks at the face of the mountain over his shoulder. Lao Beifong was hiding something, wrestling with it behind his unflickering countenance, fighting to keep it behind his teeth but knowing at the same time that it would have to be said.

"We informed Toph that she is to be married in the summer," he said finally, with a sort of desperately ignorant defiance, "and that Kahnu was to be her groom. It is more than propriety, it is her duty to obey him… she did not respond to the news as we hoped she would."

Sokka wasn't listening; his attention had been distracted, the universe had exploded, burst out wide and then snapped in small again, focusing and centered on the nondescript young man looking ridiculous among the flowering trees. Suddenly every twitch of his facial muscles, every stitch of his clothing, every inch of his form was bursting with meaning, scheming, malice; the vague empty smile was cunning and predatory, the blank emotionless eyes were wicked and wily, the tilt of his head was obnoxious, his expression was sneering. He had gone from human being to a monster, a maggot, a worm; Sokka felt himself bristling, felt himself fighting back the instinct to bare his teeth in rage. This sleazy worm, this weasel, wasn't worthy of anything, wasn't worthy of the air he was breathing or the land he was standing on, wasn't worthy of Sokka's scrutiny. He sure as _hell _wasn't worthy of Toph; smart, strong, bluntly beautiful Toph, obeying and fawning over this oozing scum, this _thing_… the nerve, the insolence of it!

Sokka had, a few times in his life, regretted that he couldn't bend, that he would be forever helpless against his little sister's enemies and forever powerless to match her strength. But now he found himself cursing his utterly ordinary hands for an entirely different reason; he wanted to smash this bastard's skull full of shale, burn the smirk off his face with a jolt of lightning, freeze the blood in his veins or slip the air out of his lungs. As it was, his hand crept to the boomerang tucked into his belt, and he felt all of the old warrior instincts pounding back into his skull with a titanic roar. Toph's would-be husband (the thought made him sick to his stomach) continued to stare at him beatifically (moronically, dumb and drooling, unfit to live).

"… and after that unpleasant episode, she wrenched the gates off of their hinges and stormed out of the gardens. One of our guards reported her opening a hole in the face of this stone formation behind me, going in, and shutting the entrance behind her. We've had our Earthbending soldiers try to get her out, of course, but she has refused to emerge, and our best soldiers have not been able to force her out. You see why we needed your presence. We are hoping that she will talk to you."

Lao Beifong stopped speaking suddenly, as though hoping to end his words as quickly as possible to keep Sokka from noticing the unmistakable tone of panic and desperation underneath them. Sokka managed to tear his suddenly-loathful gaze away from Kahnu, and focused it again over Lao Beifong's shoulder, at the massive but distinctly nonthreatening mountain face that arched up into the sky not far away.

"Let me make sure I have this straight," he heard himself saying as though from a great distance, his mind churning frantically with possibilities and words. "You told Toph that she was to be forced to marry against her will, and her response was to shut herself inside a mountain."

Lao Beifong didn't reply to this; no reply was possible. He only inclined his head in what might have been grim acknowledgement, and waited; when Sokka did not move, but instead stood rooted to the spot glaring viciously at Kahnu (he'd decided that the whelp needed some more being-glared-at before they could move on to the next stage of the operation), Lao Beifong cleared his throat conspicuously. When this still produced no response, he added in peeved tones, "We did not expect such unpleasant consequences, and we would like them resolved as soon as possible."

The man was simply speaking to hear the sound of his own voice, speaking so that the words would act as a sting to spur the sequence on to its conclusion, but Sokka felt that this statement was so shocking as to deserve its own period of silence. He transferred his glare from the slimy young upstart to the slimy arrogant lord, allowing it to migrate into a blank, utterly nonplussed stare. He wondered, vaguely, if the Lord Beifong had ever actually _met_ his daughter. ("Hi, this is Toph; blind, master Earthbender, mean as hell when provoked. She doesn't like being ordered around. Any questions?")

There was nothing for it. Feeling considerably saddened at the state of the world and those who inhabited it, Sokka only shook his head, sighed, and turned to face the mountain in question (after shooting one last poisoned-dagger glare at Kahnu's glazed smile for good measure).

The mountain was completely ordinary, as far as mountains went. It was large, and immobile and, from what Sokka could gather just by looking at it, was made entirely of stone. Some scraggly trees struggled against gravity higher up on its slopes, but where Sokka was standing he faced only a very rugged, sheer wall of smoke-blue shaded stone. It was far from smooth, that was certain -- boulders and crevasses crisscrossed it like scars -- but there were no cave mouths, no cracks wide enough for a person, albeit a fairly small person, to fit through. (Sokka was irrepressibly reminded of hands in his, so small they were swallowed in his grip, and a silhouette pressed against him that was a shoulder-high bastion of warmth on windy flights, and the shock of seeing someone who _was_ only shoulder-high on him rip apart a rearing stone wall.)

When initial examination of the mountain brought forth no useful information, Sokka strode forward, picking his way through the undergrowth towards the stone façade, his steps slowing and growing more cautious as he approached the jagged slope's base. As he left his companions (or torturers) further and further behind, he swore he could feel their collective gazes on his back, on his shoulders, heavy with ignorance and scorn. He could feel his muscles clenching, hear his heartbeat roaring in his ears as he approached the mountain faster still, until he was standing before it, staring blankly at its unyielding stone skin. The forest was wide and silent behind him, and the calm depths of the mountain and the forest slipped into his skin, slid into his lungs, gasped down with every breath; for a moment he could taste the dry sting of dust and dirt in his mouth that always made him think of pale green eyes, for a moment he could feel the shuddering palpitation in his own chest, feel the blood singing through his veins out through to his very fingertips (it was Toph who'd taught him to listen to the rhythm and speed of his own heart).

He blinked, ridding his mind of the haze of emotion and concentrating on the mountain. It was just as solid up close as it had looked from a distance; there was definitely no way Toph could have gotten in without Earthbending, and if she had used Earthbending she had left no door, no mark, no way for anyone to follow or talk to her. She had made it very plain, in her usual blunt manner, that she didn't want to be found; and when Toph didn't want to be found, there was little to no chance that the best trackers of any nation, let alone Sokka, was going to be able to find her.

That was all right, Sokka told himself, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, surveying the mountain warily. Science had an answer for everything. Quickly he began riffling through his memories, comparing all of the data on Toph that years of friendship had afforded him, acoustic properties of stone and trees, heuristics and equations; finally he settled on a strategy, a formula, that had been tried and tested and had always served him well.

The simple solutions were always best, and Sokka adhered to the simplest (and therefore the best) solution of all; when in doubt, yell.

"_Toph!_" he bellowed, and the silence of the forest was shattered into bright fragments as birds erupted from the surrounding treetops, twittering madly and pounding the air with the dull sounds of their wings. Sokka waited patiently for their frantic noises to subside, waited for the echoes of his shout to fade away into the shadows of the trees, waited through a short period of silence after. He received no response; then, just as he was filling his lungs to try again, the mountain slope before him leapt to life. Pebbles began clacking madly on its surface, boulders rumbled and shifted, and as Sokka stared dumbly at it he thought he could hear, the ghost of an echo as though from a long way off, his shout returned to him; "_Sokka_?"

"Toph!" The voice was faint and fuzzy, warped by layers of rock, but unmistakable; Sokka leaped the last two steps to the mountain's slope, scrabbling at the dust and pebbles with both hands, unexpectedly joyful (how long had it been since he'd spoken to her? Too long). "Toph, you're in there? Can you hear me?"

There was another pause; Sokka, who was not stupid no matter what his sister said, imagined the waves of his voice traveling down, down, down into the mountain's heart, compressing granite and shale as it went. Finally he heard the faint buzzing voice again, this time humming more in his fingertips than in his ears; "Of course I can hear you. Your voice is vibrating in the earth." Another pause. "Is he out there?"

"Yes, but far away," Sokka told the mountain, then leaned down to whisper conspiratorially to the stone. "I admire your restraint," he told it frankly, blunt as Toph herself. "If I were you I would have smashed his skull full of shale. Can I come in? Your parents probably think I'm doing some sort of weird voodoo magic out here, talking to the bloody mountain."

There was no answer, but after a suitable pause the mountain itself began to quake and tremble under his feet; Sokka had just enough warning to leap aside before the stone opened up beneath him, and he stood staring at a doorway that opened onto a tunnel boring straight forward into the mountain's heart. In the echoing silence that followed the groaning of the rock, he heard gasps and murmurs echoing back from where Toph's parents still stood; ignoring them, he plunged forward into the dark passageway, not even looking back as he felt rather than heard the opening crashing shut behind him.

He was engulfed by the sudden darkness of the tunnel, the air around him thick with dust kicked up by the movement of stone. The passageway was markedly cooler than the sun-warmed outside air, and the sensations of cold and dark and small closed space made Sokka think for a frantic instant of drowning in dark water; he felt a jolt of instinctive fear before his mind managed to reassert itself. He remembered rock, remembered sound, remembered Toph; he reached out one hand to feel the smooth stone walls of the tunnel, less than arm's length away, and the fear subsided. He trusted Toph, trusted her with his soul, with his life. He knew that she could feel, hear, command the mountain, he knew that being surrounded by stone was as good as being beside her. The fear vanished, and he strode confidently downward, keeping one hand trailing along the stone wall to find his way.

The tunnel was gently sloping and arrow-straight, and the stone underneath his feet felt like a paved road, so smooth was its surface (Toph had taught him that, too, to pay attention to the ground under his boots). In what seemed like no time at all his eyes, straining to discern anything in the uniform black, detected a lightening up ahead, a brighter shading of darkness; he sped up, eager to reach that light, eager to arrive where Toph was surely waiting for him. The light grew clearer and clearer, until after a few more moments he emerged from the tunnel into a huge cavern in the heart of the mountain, lit by green glowing crystals that arched around the walls and shafts of sunlight falling from the outside through crevasses and cracks.

Sokka blinked, trying to adjust his vision to the sudden light, dim as it was. The sunstreaks faded quickly from his vision, but before he could get his bearings something smacked into him, hard, and then he felt Toph's arms around him in a bone-crunching hug, her rocky rough-edged laughter ringing in his ears. Before he could collect himself enough to hug her back she released him and backed away to arm's length, grinning widely as she placed her hands on her hips, pretending to give him an appraising glance.

"It's good to see you!" she said brightly, and punched him on the shoulder hard enough to bruise; Sokka didn't bother to comment at her choice of words, because he found he was grinning too, almost laughing as he fixed her with an appraising glance of his own.

She had grown, he noted ruefully; she still only came up to a little above his shoulder, but considering how much _he_ had grown since their first meeting all those years ago, he was surprised he hadn't noticed how much taller Toph was now. She had left childhood far behind; the woman confronting him now was older, wiser, brighter than the belligerent Earthbending master he'd kidnapped from her well-meaning father.

Toph was dressed in what appeared to have once been fine clothing; the tunic was of loose, fine weave, and months of rich hospitality had conditioned Sokka's eye to see that her outfit must at one time have been quite expensive. Now, however, it was torn and tattered, fraying around the cuffs of her sleeves, stained with mud and darkened where dirt had been rubbed into the weave of the fabric. Sokka's grin widened as he thought that Toph had probably ruined the clothes beyond repair, and that she looked the best he'd ever seen her; she had never looked better than when she was clad in something that, in her father's house, wouldn't have passed for rags. Her glossy black hair was twisted up into a loose bun at the back of her head; in the weak light of the cavern Sokka thought he could detect bits of moss and streaks of dust in it (while she hadn't been enjoying a holiday with her parents, apparently she had been enjoying a holiday from Katara, who would have screeched at that sort of thing).

And then, of course, he found his gaze irresistibly drawn to her eyes, her blank white opaque eyes, and in the dim dusty gold light of the cavern he found himself impossibly reminded of the smoky ivory countenance of the moon.

"Come on, Snoozles, don't just stand there all day; come in!" Toph laughed, reaching out to grab Sokka's hand and pulling him forward, tugging him deeper into the mountain's heart, navigating effortlessly around boulders, crystal outcroppings, piles of debris. Sokka allowed himself to be dragged along, still unable to bite back his grin as Toph sped up, and suddenly the far wall of the cavern leapt into view, and there, at its base…

"Toph," Sokka said slowly as she released his hand and continued on ahead herself. "Toph, how long have you been down here?"

"I'm not sure," she answered thoughtfully, striding forward and throwing herself down on a stone couch that she apparently sculpted out of the native rock. "It's hard to tell time down here, I can't feel the sun… three days, maybe?"

"Three _days_?" The roaring in his ears was back, the animal rush of rage; a red mist suddenly coalesced before his vision, and Sokka felt his hands twitching, longing to wrap themselves about a certain lordlet's throat. "Your parents have done nothing and you've been down here three days?"

"Nothing? Of course not. My parents have tried everything. It's just that nothing's worked." She flashed him a brilliant grin, and he felt the red mist subsiding, the roar of his own heartbeat fading from his skull. "I like it down here. I can see everything, there's a stream a little farther down, and there's berries and stuff up on the surface, so I have plenty to eat. I'd much rather be down here then up there – with _him_," she added darkly, the grin vanishing, to be replaced by one of Toph's infamous murderous scowls.

Usually, Sokka mused, it was his position in life to avert the consequences of that scowl, to pick Toph up to keep her from Earthbending, or pull her aside and calm her down, or save whatever poor wretch her wrath was directed against. This time, though, he felt rather inclined to agree with her, even to hold the little wretch down while she pounded him with rocks….

Sokka blinked, biting his lip and gritting his teeth in an effort to slow his own breathing, control his own heartbeat (Toph would see, Toph would know, Toph would suspect). "Speaking of _him_," he said as casually as he could, "Mind telling me why I got dragged away from the Earth King's kitchens to dig a powerful noble's daughter out of a mountain?"

"Is that why you're here? Well, apparently I was wrong about my father's intelligence. He's managed to do something right after all," Toph growled. "At least he wasn't stupid enough to try and come get me himself."

Sokka inclined his head in acknowledgement, knowing she would feel it through the stone beneath his feet. He grimaced as he thought of what might have happened if Lao Beifong _had_ been a little more brash or a little more stupid; Sokka well knew that the only reason Toph had shut herself inside a mountain was that she couldn't actually throw rocks at her parents. For now, her love of her family was stronger than her love of freedom, but that was a very unstable state of affairs. Let her father push the issue a little more, or make one more idiotic remark, and suddenly Toph would realize that being forever banned from the manor might be a small price to pay to be free…

"You want to know what happened? I'll tell you what happened," Toph snapped, staring with a sullen anger past Sokka's left shoulder, her arms crossed over her chest. Instantly all signs of brightness and happiness were gone, all contentment had vanished, and Sokka felt something tugging uncomfortably close to his heart as Toph's expression grew suddenly stormy, her brilliant smile utterly eclipsed. She shifted restlessly on her seat; the discontent was an old one, a raw wound, a simmering anger seething to be expressed – and express it she certainly did.

"It's simple," Toph said almost woodenly, her words short and clipped and sharp. "I came home, got settled in, and my father said I should start getting ready for the wedding. I asked who was getting married. He prattled on about duty and nobility and convention and honor, then sprang that weasely little bastard on me as my new husband." She shrugged, a quick violent movement of the shoulders, and slipped her blank white gaze down, turning her head aside to fix the floor with her scorching glare. "I really shouldn't have been surprised," she snapped, and Sokka thought he could almost see her tensing, see her entire body growing rigid and straight as she began to get upset. "I should have known something like this would happen. I should have known they'd spring something like this on me, something stupid, something _noble_. Nothing's changed for them. Nothing will ever change for them. No matter what I do, no matter how many battles I fight, no matter how many times I save the world, it won't be good enough. Nothing's good enough! Nothing's ever good enough for them!" She was on her feet, hands clenched into fists at her sides, teeth gritted and feet spread apart in an Earthbending stance, as though she was preparing for battle. Sokka spared a nervous glance for the cavern over his shoulder as the stalagmites around them groaned and trembled with Toph's distress.

"It's never good enough! I'm not good enough!" Toph shouted, and Sokka snapped his gaze back to her opaque eyes, back to her pale porcelain face now flushed with rage, the ground under her feet shaking with her heaving breaths. "I'll never be anything to them, no matter what I do! All I am is the helpless little nonexistent blind girl, maybe fit to marry some lordling and live like a bird in a little cage for the rest of my life, if I'm lucky!"

"Toph…" Sokka murmured, unsure of whether he meant to warn her, to calm her down, to yell, to whisper. A very large part of him was growing red and loud and angry, was pulsing in time to Toph's vicious words, resonating to the way her voice seemed to echo more times than it should have in the stone cavern. A very large part of him was pounding with her fevered footsteps (she was pacing now, stomping around the cave as though to take her anger out on the stone beneath her). A very large part of him was outraged on her behalf, infuriated that Toph, who had proved herself a hero and a warrior a thousand times over, should be treated like nothing more than a porcelain doll!

But there was something, else, too, something beneath the righteous indignation, something that was smaller and more intense than the anger on Toph's behalf; there was another anger, tight and close and smoldering in a white-hot ember in the pit of his stomach, an animal hatred that had claws and fangs and howled for blood in a deep primordial corner of his brain. It had nothing to do with Toph's freedom and Toph's parents; it had to do with that idiotic lordling's smile, it had to do with his arrogance, his presumption, his _nerve_ in taking Toph for his own after Sokka had fought with her and protected her and been protected by her.

That howling anger wanted to fight, to claw, to punish, it wanted to see the intruder (_intruder? that didn't make any sense_) scream for mercy. It wanted to _kill. _It was this much more personal anger that set Sokka's own teeth on edge, made him want to start pacing in Toph's wake (he only stood still because he felt, in some bizarre abstract way, that at least one of them should be rooted and sane and it obviously wasn't going to be Toph).

"They just don't get it!" Toph was shouting, and Sokka snapped his focus back to her, watched sharply as she slid her weight out along one foot, throwing a vicious punch into the air and listening with satisfaction as the stone wall before her crumpled like paper. "They don't understand anything!" she railed, and Sokka had to blink to shield his eyes from the shower of dust her attacks were causing. "They don't understand what it's like to have a real life and real friends, they don't understand what it's like to live in the real world where things happen and people fight and people are free. Their entire world is the upper ring of Ba Sing Se! That's all they understand; fancy parties and groveling and _weakness_, blindness, stupidity! The upper ring of Ba Sing Se; that's their entire universe," she growled, and her voice had dropped from its murderous crescendo into a softer snarl, but it was bitter and biting and it made Sokka's fist clench without direction from his brain. He wanted to hit the people who had brought that bitterness and helplessness into Toph's voice. He wanted to _hurt_ those people, make them pay for what they'd done (his protective brotherly instincts – and another set of instincts entirely – were making his blood boil).

His attention was distracted yet again, this time by the heavy sensation of Toph's blank eyes fixed on him (was it the silvery cataracts of blindness that made her gaze feel so heavy on his shoulders?). He blinked the red haze out of his vision and turned to face her tirade, only to find that she had stopped speaking and was standing with her arms crossed over her chest again, staring a little past his ear, a scowl on her face and one bare foot tapping in a slow, steady rhythm against the stone.

Sokka forgot to wonder why she had fallen silent, he forgot to be angry at the circumstances outside the mountain, he forgot to ask Toph what she was doing, or comfort her, or yell at her, or whatever it was he'd intended to do a moment ago (which he couldn't remember). His attention was completely and utterly distracted by the sight of her, standing by some marvelous coincidence directly underneath one of the weak, unsteady beams of sunlight that streamed through a crack in the vaulted ceiling high above them, spilling down into the mountain's heart.

While he stared, breathless and dumbfounded, Toph stood still as any pillar of stone, waiting; then, when she was sure she had his full attention, she slowly extended one clenched fist out towards him, and uncurled her fingers. For a crazy, blazing moment Sokka wanted to grab the outstretched hand, pull her closer and then he was thinking about doing things that the sane part of his mind screamed at him he really, _really_ should not be doing. Then he noticed that Toph had something in her palm, and he managed to shove the roaring weight of his own thoughts away long enough to see what it was.

She was still standing with her feet planted in a defensive Earthbending stance, steady as a mountain, rooted as a hill; only she was starting to shake, very slightly, tremors dissipating down her limbs and into the earth as she trembled with rage and other emotions that Sokka could not identify. And in her hand, held palm up for the entire world to see, there was a small, shiny ring.

"This is what he gave me," Toph spat, unresisting as Sokka stepped forward and took it from her, lifting it on the tip of one finger with a sort of horrified fascination as though it contained some hidden poison, as thought it would bite him like a snake. He was no metal expert, but he flicked his finger against the side of it anyway, and held it up to his eye, peering through it at the cave beyond; it was a silly gesture, and a stupid one, but he felt it was necessary (there was more to the ring that first appeared; and Sokka, ever the man of science, wanted to find out what it was).

Brass, probably, or bronze, he decided. It was small, barely large enough to slide over his pinky finger; he thought that it would be just the right size for Toph's astonishingly delicate hands, but that thought was full of blind howling rage (the slimy suitor sliding it onto her, his hands touching her, it made him sick), so he shoved it down to the back of his skull and focused on the ring again. There were carvings dancing around the outer rim; Sokka, peering in the dim light of the cavern, could identify the flying boar crest of Toph's family, united with a strange crest featuring a dragon coiled upon itself like an adder.

Inspection complete, Sokka handed the ring back to Toph; she seized it from him and threw it, violently, as though its touch had burned her. "That's what he gave me!" she cried, her voice almost drowning out the faint tinny clattering of the ring fetching up against the stone wall. "They wanted me to give up my life, and my friends, and my freedom – and they think I would do it for that? They think I would sell my freedom for that stupid ring? For the inner ring of Ba Sing Se?"

_No_, Sokka was yelling with her, inside his head. _No, don't sell it, not for this, not for anything. If you sold your soul_… The rest of the thought astonished him, but it was already in his head, and he had to follow it through. If Toph ever sold her freedom, agreed to be chained to the upper ring of Ba Sing Se… then Sokka wasn't sure he would be able to go on being free without her.

The revelation was a relief. For the first time, the dull, pounding rage at the base of his skull vanished entirely; the world crystallized before his vision, clear and calm again, and he was able to shut the Beifongs and their silly matchmaking mishaps out of his mind entirely. After all, what did he care if their delusions of grandeur led them astray, down the dangerous path of offending the mightiest Earthbender in the world? What did he care about the petty little lords and their pathetic little politics and power-mongering? All he cared about was Toph (although, if he were ever offered a chance to teach that little Kahnu a lesson or two about what happened when you messed with the Avatar's friends, he certainly wouldn't turn it down).

"Let's get out of here," he said suddenly, too loudly; Toph was standing close to him, so close she was staring directly into his chest, and the sound of his voice startled her so badly that she jumped and pitched forward, almost knocking him down. He steadied her without thinking, and smiled as she pushed him away with a vicious growl.

"Come on," he coaxed, still grinning because he knew she would hear it. "I've got Appa waiting in the village square. Just dig us a tunnel out the other side of the mountain; we'll ditch this place, and we'll be in Omashu with Aang and Katara by morning."

Toph grinned at the mention of those magic names; with only a curt nod to signal her agreement, she turned briskly and set both hands to the stone of the cavern, carving out a tunnel that Sokka could already see he would have to stoop in order to traverse. But he didn't mind; he only watched, grinning, as Toph threw herself into the new task as though trying to cover up for her earlier burst of emotion.

Soon she disappeared into the darkness of the new aperture, moving quickly into the unknown gloom ahead; Sokka moved to follow her, but hesitated as his foot kicked against something that clinked and clattered away from him, rolling with a glint of light to fall into a dusty shadowed corner.

He stepped forward, leaning down to pick up the ring which Toph had so violently renounced, the ring which had started so much trouble and probably derailed the politics of the Earth Kingdom fiefdoms and cities for miles around. Strange, he reflected, how such a little thing could have such far-reaching consequences…

He stood staring at the thing in his hand a moment longer, rubbing it contemplatively with his thumb. Toph had taught him long ago to notice the texture of things; and though he was no expert on Earth Kingdom culture, he knew the feel of a marriage proposal when he encountered one. The Water Tribe necklaces, the Fire Nation medallions, and now this little ring; all of them spoke to the deeper parts of the brain, spoke of devotion, dedication. It was, he reflected, symbolism made tangible, a promise beaten into metal and stone. Love, forever; until the metal corroded away, until the mountains slid into the sea.

Toph's voice shook him out of his reverie, bouncing back down the new tunnel and into the cavern, impatiently calling his name. He hesitated, still holding the ring; then, acting on impulse, he dropped it into a pouch in his belt before trotting off to join Toph (his Toph) somewhere underneath the mountain's roots.

After all, he thought as he felt the bronze beginning to burn through the leather of his belt-pouch, a ring like that was a useful thing to have. You never knew if you'd need it someday.

* * *

The End. 

Now, because I've been just as starved of feedback as you have been of Tokka, I beg you to review!


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